Sunday, May 22, 2011

What do we know about the economic assessments' literature done in developing countries?

At IFPRI we conducted in 2008 a literature review of 137 publications.  The 137 publications were chosen from those in an initial Google Scholar search that yielded more than 10,000 hits.

The large number of hits had to be reduced to a more manageable number by establishing the criteria of selecting only those publications with an identifiable peer review process, stated economic assessment method, as a requisite for publication.

We classified studies depending on the unit of assessment studied including measuring impacts on farmers/households, trade, industry/national, and consumers.


Chinese Bt cotton, China
Our literature review showed that:
  • Most studied crop  and trait combination is Bt cotton
  • Most of the studies conducted in China, India and South Africa
  • On average, economic impact from the adoption of Genetically Modified crops was profitable—but averages mask variability by agro-climate, host cultivar, farmer



  • This collection of studies identified that too few traits have been studied and too few cases/authors implementing such studies. Taking this into considerations lesson generalizations to all GM crops should not be drawn yet…
  • Assessment methods need improvement especially those dealing with household decision making processes, risk and uncertainty, different types of selection bias and endogeneity
  • Need more time to describe adoption and better methods to describe adoption in an ex ante setting.
  • Next decade need to concentrate more on:
                 o    Information and knowledge flows (to/from farmer )
                 o    gender, generational and other cross-cutting issues
                 o    impacts on poverty and inequality,
                 o    externalities and other institutional issues

Citation
Smale, Melinda; Zambrano, Patricia; Gruère, Guillaume; Falck-Zepeda, José; Matuschke, Ira; Horna, Daniela; Nagarajan, Latha; Yerramareddy, Indira; Jones, Hannah. 2009. Measuring the economic impacts of transgenic crops in developing agriculture during the first decade: Approaches, findings, and future directions. (Food policy review 10) Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) 107 pages.
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