IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/x5vmz.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are Matching Funds for Smallholder Irrigation Money Well Spent?

Author

Listed:
  • Mullally, Conner
  • Chakravarty, Shourish

Abstract

Groundwater irrigation can dramatically affect agricultural production and productivity. Despite its potential as an agricultural development tool, little credible evidence exists for the impacts of groundwater development on smallholder agriculture. We add to the evidence on the benefits of irrigation investments for small producers by evaluating the Rural Business Development (RBD) program of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Nicaragua for small plantain producers. The RBD program offered matching funds covering up to 30% of the cost of two years of inputs, extension services, and diesel-powered micro-sprinkler irrigation for individual farms. In order to estimate the average impact of the RBD program on its beneficiaries, we combine model selection via the LASSO with doubly robust treatment effect estimation as applied to two years of panel data for 146 producers. We find that the program had substantial impacts on plantain revenue and production, while achieving nearly complete irrigation coverage of plantain land among beneficiaries. We find no discernible impact on household expenditure.

Suggested Citation

  • Mullally, Conner & Chakravarty, Shourish, 2018. "Are Matching Funds for Smallholder Irrigation Money Well Spent?," SocArXiv x5vmz, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:x5vmz
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/x5vmz
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5968f4156c613b022b993bd4/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/x5vmz?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, Michael L, 2008. "Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt15n8j26f, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    2. Carter, Michael R. & Tjernström, Emilia & Toledo, Patricia, 2019. "Heterogeneous impact dynamics of a rural business development program in Nicaragua," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 77-98.
    3. Cattaneo, Matias D., 2010. "Efficient semiparametric estimation of multi-valued treatment effects under ignorability," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 155(2), pages 138-154, April.
    4. Shenggen Fan & Ashok Gulati & Sukhadeo Thorat, 2008. "Investment, subsidies, and pro‐poor growth in rural India," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 39(2), pages 163-170, September.
    5. Marrit Van Den Berg & Ruerd Ruben, 2006. "Small-Scale irrigation and income distribution in Ethiopia," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 868-880.
    6. Edwards, Eric C. & Smith, Steven M., 2018. "The Role of Irrigation in the Development of Agriculture in the United States," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(4), pages 1103-1141, December.
    7. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    8. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2014. "Inference on Treatment Effects after Selection among High-Dimensional Controlsâ€," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 608-650.
    9. Dillon, Andrew, 2011. "The Effect of Irrigation on Poverty Reduction, Asset Accumulation, and Informal Insurance: Evidence from Northern Mali," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 2165-2175.
    10. Matias D. Cattaneo, 2010. "multi-valued treatment effects," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    11. Anderson, Michael L., 2008. "Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(484), pages 1481-1495.
    12. Ximena V. Del Carpio & Norman Loayza & Gayatri Datar, 2011. "Is Irrigation Rehabilitation Good for Poor Farmers? An Impact Evaluation of a Non‐Experimental Irrigation Project in Peru," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 449-473, June.
    13. Angus Deaton & Salman Zaidi, 2002. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 14101, April.
    14. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2014. "High-Dimensional Methods and Inference on Structural and Treatment Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 29-50, Spring.
    15. Huang, Qiuqiong & Rozelle, Scott & Lohmar, Bryan & Huang, Jikun & Wang, Jinxia, 2006. "Irrigation, agricultural performance and poverty reduction in China," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 30-52, February.
    16. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2007. "Inverse probability weighted estimation for general missing data problems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1281-1301, December.
    17. Agnes R. Quisumbing & Ruth Meinzen-Dick & Terri L. Raney & André Croppenstedt & Julia A. Behrman & A (ed.), 2014. "Gender in Agriculture," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-94-017-8616-4, December.
    18. Andrew D. Foster & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2010. "Microeconomics of Technology Adoption," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 395-424, September.
    19. Conner Mullally & Alessandro Maffioli, 2016. "Extension and Matching Grants for Improved Management: An Evaluation of the Uruguayan Livestock Program," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(1), pages 333-350.
    20. Andrew Dillon, 2011. "Do Differences in the Scale of Irrigation Projects Generate Different Impacts on Poverty and Production?," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 474-492, June.
    21. Farrell, Max H., 2015. "Robust inference on average treatment effects with possibly more covariates than observations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-23.
    22. Zhu, Mu & Ghodsi, Ali, 2006. "Automatic dimensionality selection from the scree plot via the use of profile likelihood," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 918-930, November.
    23. Susan Athey & Guido Imbens & Thai Pham & Stefan Wager, 2017. "Estimating Average Treatment Effects: Supplementary Analyses and Remaining Challenges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 278-281, May.
    24. Guido W. Imbens, 2004. "Nonparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Under Exogeneity: A Review," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 4-29, February.
    25. Ton, Giel & Klerkx, Laurens & de Grip, Karin & Rau, Marie-Luise, 2015. "Innovation grants to smallholder farmers: Revisiting the key assumptions in the impact pathways," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 9-23.
    26. Fitsum Hagos & Gayathri Jayasinghe & Seleshi Bekele Awulachew & Mekonnen Loulseged & Aster Denekew Yilma, 2012. "Agricultural water management and poverty in Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 43, pages 99-111, November.
    27. Susan Athey & Guido Imbens, 2015. "A Measure of Robustness to Misspecification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 476-480, May.
    28. Danilov, Dmitry & Magnus, J.R.Jan R., 2004. "On the harm that ignoring pretesting can cause," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 27-46, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jordan, Cristian & Donoso, Guillermo & Speelman, Stijn, 2021. "Measuring the effect of improved irrigation technologies on irrigated agriculture. A study case in Central Chile," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
    2. Paul Christian & Steven Glover & Florence Kondylis & Valerie Mueller & Matteo Ruzzante & Astrid Zwager, 2022. "Do private consultants promote savings and investments in rural Mozambique?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(1), pages 22-36, January.
    3. Hossain, Marup & Mabiso, Athur & Garbero, Alessandra, 2022. "Matching grants and economic activities among horticultural entrepreneurs: Long-term evidence from Rwanda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    4. Christian Stetter & Philipp Mennig & Johannes Sauer, 2022. "Using Machine Learning to Identify Heterogeneous Impacts of Agri-Environment Schemes in the EU: A Case Study," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 49(4), pages 723-759.
    5. Zewdie, Markose Chekol & Van Passel, Steven & Moretti, Michele & Annys, Sofie & Tenessa, Daregot Berihun & Ayele, Zemen Ayalew & Tsegaye, Enyew Adgo & Cools, Jan & Minale, Amare Sewnet & Nyssen, Jan, 2020. "Pathways how irrigation water affects crop revenue of smallholder farmers in northwest Ethiopia: A mixed approach," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    2. Garbero, Alessandra & Songsermsawas, Tisorn, 2016. "Impact of modern irrigation on household production and welfare outcomes: Evidence from the PASIDP project in Ethiopia," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235949, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Garbero, A. & Songsermsawas, T., 2018. "IFAD RESEARCH SERIES 31 - Impact of modern irrigation on household production and welfare outcomes: evidence from the participatory small-scale irrigation development programme (PASIDP) project in Eth," IFAD Research Series 280080, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
    4. Michael C. Knaus, 2021. "A double machine learning approach to estimate the effects of musical practice on student’s skills," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 184(1), pages 282-300, January.
    5. Chunrong Ai & Oliver Linton & Kaiji Motegi & Zheng Zhang, 2021. "A unified framework for efficient estimation of general treatment models," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 779-816, July.
    6. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    7. Graham, Bryan S. & Pinto, Cristine Campos de Xavier, 2022. "Semiparametrically efficient estimation of the average linear regression function," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 115-138.
    8. Tobias A. Jopp, 2018. "On the economics of forced labour. Did the employment of Prisoners-of-War depress German coal mining productivity in World War I?," Working Papers 0132, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    9. Farrell, Max H., 2015. "Robust inference on average treatment effects with possibly more covariates than observations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-23.
    10. Su, Liangjun & Ura, Takuya & Zhang, Yichong, 2019. "Non-separable models with high-dimensional data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 212(2), pages 646-677.
    11. Magnan, Nicholas & Hoffmann, Vivian & Opoku, Nelson & Gajate Garrido, Gissele & Kanyam, Daniel Akwasi, 2021. "Information, technology, and market rewards: Incentivizing aflatoxin control in Ghana," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    12. Özler, Berk & Çelik, Çiğdem & Cunningham, Scott & Cuevas, P. Facundo & Parisotto, Luca, 2021. "Children on the move: Progressive redistribution of humanitarian cash transfers among refugees," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    13. Difang Huang & Jiti Gao & Tatsushi Oka, 2022. "Semiparametric Single-Index Estimation for Average Treatment Effects," Papers 2206.08503, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    14. Max H. Farrell, 2013. "Robust Inference on Average Treatment Effects with Possibly More Covariates than Observations," Papers 1309.4686, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2018.
    15. Matias D Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Xinwei Ma, 2019. "Two-Step Estimation and Inference with Possibly Many Included Covariates," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(3), pages 1095-1122.
    16. Siu, Jade & Sterck, Olivier & Rodgers, Cory, 2023. "The freedom to choose: Theory and quasi-experimental evidence on cash transfer restrictions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    17. McIntosh, Craig & Zeitlin, Andrew, 2022. "Using household grants to benchmark the cost effectiveness of a USAID workforce readiness program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    18. Patricia Justino & Marinella Leone & Pierfrancesco Rolla & Monique Abimpaye & Caroline Dusabe & Marie D Uwamahoro & Richard Germond, 2023. "Improving Parenting Practices for Early Child Development: Experimental Evidence from Rwanda," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 1510-1550.
    19. Carlos A. Flores & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2009. "Evaluating Nonexperimental Estimators for Multiple Treatments: Evidence from Experimental Data," Working Papers 2010-10, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    20. Jeffrey D. Michler & Anna Josephson, 2022. "Recent developments in inference: practicalities for applied economics," Chapters, in: A Modern Guide to Food Economics, chapter 11, pages 235-268, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:x5vmz. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.