About
102
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Introduction
Mywish Maredia is a professor of International Development in Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. Her research has focused on the economic impacts of agricultural research, technology adoption, seed system efficiency, and the economics of science and technology policies. She has extensive experience working with development projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia on a wide range of topics, including technology adoption, land titling, nutrition and value chain, ICT, and M&E
Additional affiliations
November 2000 - present
Position
- Professor (Full)
Description
- Dr. Maredia’s research is focused on the economic impacts of agric. R&D, technology adoption, seed system efficiency, and the economics of policy change. She has experience working in Africa, LAC & Asia in designing and conducting impact evaluations.
Publications
Publications (102)
We study the impact of providing consulting services and major capital infusions to small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food sector in Kenya. We exploit a quasi‐experimental design that matches treated firms with comparable firms that applied for the same support but were just short of scoring sufficient points to receive this support...
Community-based extension relies on social relationships with farmers to increase the trust in and effectiveness of extension activities. Personality traits play an important role in social outcomes. We develop a conceptual model which shows that farmer personality can influence the likelihood of being aware of and incorporating information from co...
Many development programs rely on the idea that increasing profitability of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) could increase availability of nutritious foods among low‐income consumers. We designed a randomized controlled trial in which we made a specific nutritious product produced by an SME exhaustively available in low‐income local mark...
Legume seed systems in many developing countries are characterized by low availability of certified seeds because the private sector is often absent, and the public sector has limited capacity to produce such seeds. Farmer seed enterprises (FSEs) are therefore increasingly promoted as alternative suppliers of certified and in some instances, qualit...
The yoghurt market represents one of the most dynamic consumer segments in Kenya's dairy industry. Product innovation like yoghurt enriched with nutrients is increasingly promoted to address the challenges of micro‐nutrient deficiencies, especially among children and women of poor households. Using data from 383 in‐household interviews in predomina...
Planting quality seed is essential for increasing crop productivity. We study the potato seed market in Kenya and estimate farmers’ willingness to pay for certified, clean and ware potato seeds that use reputation and certification strategies at varying costs to provide quality signal. We find that farmers are prone to quality misperceptions and ad...
Zinc deficiency is a severe public health problem in Bangladesh. We examine the effects of nutritional information on rural consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for two ways to increase zinc intake through rice, the main staple crop-low-milling that gives rice grains a distinctive light brown color (a visible trait) and sets it apart from the cultur...
This study assesses preferences for COVID‐19 pandemic recovery policies from four key groups representing the upstream (input retailers), farm (farmers), and downstream (millers and traders) levels of Myanmar's agri‐food‐system using the best–worst scaling (BWS) method. Our results show that nonrestrictive policies such as maintaining open internat...
Many governments imposed stringent lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. With consumer incomes already depressed, the potential impacts of these measures on urban food prices are of particular concern, especially for poor or vulnerable households. This paper examines changes in urban food prices during lockdown using detailed food price data from...
African governments imposed mobility restrictions to suppress the spread of COVID-19. Many observers feared these measures would dramatically decrease incomes and increase food insecurity and anticipated that urban households would be much more impacted than rural ones. We use rural and urban survey data from 4000 households across five African cou...
Effective policy requires an accurate understanding of peoples’ livelihoods activities. The data for this evidence is often generated via lengthy surveys where designated respondents provide information about their household members. This burden on respondents may lead to both losses and biases as they grow fatigued during the interview. We test th...
The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has devastated health and economic systems worldwide with varying impacts across different economic sectors. Projections of its impact in early 2020 were that developing countries in the global south with historic system inefficiencies would be the worst hit, as weaknesses in their economies would be ex...
Families that rely on rain-fed agriculture are prone to rainfall shocks. We use a unique dataset of at-risk children in rural Rwanda to estimate the impact of rainfall shocks during a child’s in utero period. We find that increases in in utero rainfall during the mid-season period increase child height-for-age z-scores; but increases in in utero ra...
The objective of this contribution is to report the initial impacts of measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic on Myanmar's agri-food system. Myanmar is one of several late-transforming low-income countries in Southeast Asia where agriculture still plays a large role in rural livelihoods, and where food prices are a key factor affecting nut...
Seed systems for vegetatively propagated crops (VPCs) are frequently governed by regulatory blueprints designed for major cereal crops. This approach tends to disregard the distinct biological characteristics of VPCs, thus limiting farmers’ access to high-quality planting material and increasing the risk of pest and disease transmission. In this pa...
Common bean is the most important legume crop for human consumption around the world. For this reason, bean breeders are challenged with increasing bean production while facing new problems like climate change. Guatemalan climbing beans have been suggested to represent a previously undefined race in the Middle American gene pool that may represent...
Encouraging the widespread adoption and use of new on-farm technologies is an important part of productivity-led strategies to promote agricultural transformation. While many interventions have been designed to promote adoption through extension and education, little is known about how these efforts influence farmer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for new...
Products were not labeled as information on rice types was shared in the audio info treatments. No visible differences can be detected between the BFLM and NBFLM rice while obvious milling differences can be observed between the NBFLM and NBFHM rice. Market prices were not revealed to the respondents when eliciting bids.
An impact assessment study was conducted in 2015–2016 to estimate the adoption of improved cassava varieties in Vietnam, and to understand the impact of using this improved technology on farmers’ livelihoods. The study was implemented by carrying out a nationally representative survey of 949 cassava-growing households across 79 villages in Vietnam....
Double blind field experiments and experimental auctions were conducted with bean and cowpea farmers in Tanzania and Ghana to gauge the relative demand for three types of seed products that differ in price and quality: certified, quality declared, and recycled. Whether the cost differential makes these seeds qualitatively different products as refl...
Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is an important staple crop for smallholder farmers, particularly in Eastern and Southern Africa. To support common bean breeding and seed dissemination, a high throughput SNP genotyping platform with 1500 established SNP assays has been developed at a genotyping service provider which allows breeders without the...
This study provides empirical evidence on whether and how integrating legumes into production systems affects measures of small-scale farm households’ food availability and access. We used nationally representative household panel survey data from Zambia to estimate the differential effects on cereal-growing households of incorporating grain legume...
2017): Can mobile phone-based animated videos induce learning and technology adoption among low-literate farmers? A field experiment in Burkina Faso, Information Technology for Development, ABSTRACT This article explores an innovative approach to deliver information about new agricultural technology that combines a versatile and potentially lower c...
This article explores an innovative approach to deliver information about new agricultural technology that combines a versatile and potentially lower cost method of developing animated videos with another low-cost method of sharing it on mobile devices (i.e. mobile phone). It describes a randomized controlled field experiment conducted in Burkina F...
Background:
Accurate identification of crop cultivars is crucial in assessing the impact of crop improvement research outputs. Two commonly used identification approaches, elicitation of variety names from farmer interviews and morphological plant descriptors, have inherent uncertainty levels. Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) was used in a case stud...
Although common bean is a traditional crop for Zambia, it previously received modest support from the government. In 1982, research on bean improvement intensified, with investment from FAO/UNDP and CIAT. Consequently, there has been an increasing trend in the outputs of bean research in terms of the number of improved varieties developed and relea...
Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is an important staple in Burkina Faso as well as many other countries in West Africa. Among the major cowpea pests affecting the crop are the legume pod borer (Maruca vitrata), flower thrips (Megalurothrips sjostedti), bruchids (Callosobruchus maculatus), and pod-sucking bugs, for which conventional plant breeding has no...
The present study assesses the priorities for Indian agricultural research by regions and commodities. Using multi-criteria scoring approach, priorities for agricultural research have been assessed taking into consideration the developmental goals of growth, equity, sustainability and research capacity. Assessment of regional priorities have been s...
New estimates of the impacts of germplasm improvement in the major staple crops between 1965 and 2004 on global land-cover change are presented, based on simulations carried out using a global economic model (Global Trade Analysis Project Agro-Ecological Zone), a multicommodity, multiregional computable general equilibrium model linked to a global...
This article introduces a special section on impact assessment of agricultural research, institutional innovation and technology adoption. It is based on papers presented at a pre-conference workshop held at the International Conference of Agricultural Economists at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil in August 2012. It briefly reviews the history of impact asse...
Investments in agricultural research by national and international organizations have successfully generated improvements in the economic well-being of people, well quantified in a wide range of ex-post impact assessment studies. In contrast, relatively little attention has been given to quantifying the impacts of research on the environment. This...
Underinvestment in agricultural research remains rife across Southeast Asia, despite the remaining importance of the subregion’s agricultural sector and ample evidence of agricultural technology impact to date. To help identify specific areas where additional investment is most needed, this study compares the impact potential for the poor of altern...
Based on a comprehensive search and review of the literature, 42 studies are identified for in-depth review and analysis of documented impacts of agricultural research from 1959 to 2009. This body of evidence is subjected to a systematic, quantitative scrutiny for the coverage and type of impact to derive patterns, gaps and trends in documented imp...
This paper uses a double hurdle regression analysis to estimate the factors influencing marketing decisions among potato growers in the central highlands of Angola, focusing on gender of household head, productive asset ownership and transaction costs. Although the results suggest that the quantity produced is exogenous in the models for market par...
When evaluating the impact of a program, the effects of interventions on program outcomes must be measured against a valid counterfactual case. Constructing a valid counterfactual is especially important when experimental data is not available. Building a baseline ensuring that treatment and comparison groups are similar as well as identifying pote...
The agricultural education system plays an important role in developing knowledge resources and preparing well-trained individuals and the next generation of labor force that becomes part of the public sector (government), the private sector (entrepreneurs, farm producers, agri-business entities) and the NGOs. An education system that is innovative...
The Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program (Pulse CRSP) had allocated a major part of its resources to providing graduate degree training (GDT) of scientists/researchers in order to strengthen agricultural research capacity in Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. However, no systematic attempt had been made to assess the impact of t...
This article illustrates a methodology for assessing economic returns to a publicly funded breeding program in the presence of private sector investments, and spill-ins from other contemporary public institutions and past research efforts. The approach consists of determining yield gains from bean improvement research; applying these yield gain est...
This study offers a "best evidence" approach to summarizing recent benefit-cost analyses of international agricultural research in Africa. First, from an extensive literature review and the resulting global inventory of impact studies, 23 studies are identified that calculate aggregate rates of return for Consultative Group on International Agricul...
Summary This study tests the null hypothesis that it is sufficient to interview only the household head to obtain accurate information on household income. Results show that using a husband's estimate of his wife's income does not produce statistically reliable results for poverty analysis. Estimates of the wife's income provided by the husband and...
Strategic Guidance for Ex Post Impact Assessment of Agricultural Research
Prepared for the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment CGIAR Science Council
The study evaluated the impacts of the graduate degree training (GDT) component of the B/C CRSP. In their enhanced capacity, trainees have been playing important roles in strengthening teaching and research capacity in bean and cowpea sectors, both in the U.S. and in host countries. The study recommends the continued commitment and increased financ...
In 1994, the World Trade Organization (WTO) passed the Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) requiring all member countries to establish a regulatory system for intellectual property protection (IPP). Among its requirements, Article 27(3)b of TRIPS specifies that for plant varieties each country must have a pat...
This book discusses the legal, agribusiness and public policy issues that connect intellectual property protection with advancements in agricultural biotechnology. It has 24 chapters and a subject index. The book is intended as a reference for students and practitioners in intellectual property and agribusiness, for those in the agricultural indust...
This paper deals with conceptual and methodological issues arising in ex post environmental impact assessment of agricultural research. It presents a case study of approaches used (and not used) and challenges associated with the ex post assessment of environmental impacts of research supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultura...
The benefits of nature-based tourism to biodiversity conservation are often presumed but rarely quantified. The relative value placed on attributes of nature parks is unknown, as is the contribution of biodiversity to tourists willingness to visit a particular protected area. We surveyed tourists and foreign residents in Uganda to determine how pre...
The purpose of this working paper is to help accelerate improvements in seed sector performance by providing a practical framework for reviewing seed sector development strategy in a market economy context. The paper is divided into three major sections. The first section defines what a seed system is and presents a generalized model of the stages...
The purpose of this working paper is to help accelerate improvements in seed sector performance by providing a practical framework for reviewing seed sector development strategy in a market economy context. The paper is divided into three major sections. The first section defines what a seed system is and presents a generalized model of the stages...
Despite the clear influence of European Union biotechnology restrictions on trade patterns, very little work has been done to model these influences or their long-run effects. This paper presents an economic trade theory model of biotechnology, biotechnology research and development (R&D), and biotechnology regulation. The model analyzes the impact...
This document is the technical annex to the full paper “The Effects of Biotechnology Policy on Trade and Growth,” which is available separately.
This paper assesses the record of five countries in southern and eastern Africa: Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique. The paper focuses on the course of reform in each – initial conditions, key elements of the reform, and institutional response to it – and draws lessons for policy makers, donors, and researchers.
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Directorate of Economics, Republic of Mozambique
Biotechnology is redefining the nature of agricultural research and intellectual property. In response, public agricultural research institutions are increasingly protecting their intellectual property and commercializing research results. This raises the question: Is agricultural research still a public good? This paper is a critical first step in...
Expenditures on agricultural research in the public sector, including the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) have stagnated and in some cases, declined sharply in recent years. This has focused attention on issues of efficiency of agricultural research systems, especially the number, size, scope, type, and locations of their progra...
The paper reviews and summarizes evidences of impacts of crop improvement research of major food crops in Africa. It provides evidence of increased availability of improved varieties of major food crops to farmers in Africa, increased food production in regions where adoption has occurred, and positive returns to research investment, indicating tha...
This paper is published by the Department of Agricultural Economics and the Department of Economics, Michigan State University (MSU). Funding for this research was provided by USAID/Ethiopia and the Food Security II Cooperative Agreement (AEP-5459-A-00-2041-00) between Michigan State University and the United States Agency for International Develop...
Critics argue that high external input technologies are too costly for African farmers, and that pilot programs to promote them are economically unsustainable. This paper assesses Sasakawa-Global 2000 programs in Ethiopia and Mozambique; budgets, yield models and subsector analysis help explain the radically different country results and prognoses...
The emergence of agricultural biotechnology and policy responses to is altering global agricultural trade patterns. This paper models the effects of restrictive policies concerning the production and consumption of genetically modified agricultural products. The model relies on a Hecksher-Ohlin-Samuelson framework, adapted to include neo-Schumpeter...
This paper examines the impact of European Union policy on genetically modified organisms on trade flows and economic growth. Restrictive European Union policies on biotech production and consumption result in: an effective export subsidy of capital to the South; new trade flows; North America being the dominant producer of biotech research and dev...
Several characteristics of biotech industry structure follow cyclical patterns. Mergers and acquisitions activity shows cyclical behavior, with peaks from 1988-92 and 1996-97 and a valley from 1993-95. The ratio of large-firm to small-firm field trials, and the Herfindahl-Hirshmann concentration index, move pro-cyclically with M&A activity. This pa...
Over the past fifteen years, the agricultural biotechnology industry has exhibited cyclical behavior in concentration and consolidation. This paper provides a theoretical model of endogenous R&D, in which industry concentration exhibits cyclical behavior. The model also generates additional testable hypotheses, and policy implications.
The nature of public agricultural research changed in 1980 when the Bayh-Dole Act allowed universities to retain title to inventions that were created with Federal funds, and the court case Diamond v. Chakrabarty allowed patenting of living tissue and eventually other bio-engineered products. In 1997, over 2,300 new licenses and options were execut...
Statistical annex and copies of questionnaire
The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that can be used by agricultural leaders, administrators, policy makers, and seed program managers to (1) understand key factors affecting seed system development; and (2) compare organizational and institutional strategies for increasing seed system effectiveness. A literature review o...
This paper discusses the significance of intellectual property (IP) protection by public research institutes. It argues that such protection can be compatible with the mission of public organizations, especially in cases where private firms will underinvest due to thin markets, high development costs or technological complexity. The paper outlines...
In 1993, the Sasakawa/Global 2000 Program (SG) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) began a joint program to demonstrate that substantial productivity increases could be achieved when farmers were given appropriate extension messages and agricultural inputs were delivered on time at reasonable prices. The program provided credit, inputs and extens...
The benefits of nature-based tourism to biodiversity conservation are often presumed but rarely quantified. The relative value placed on attributes of nature parks is unknown, as is the contribution of biodiversity to tourists willingness to visit a particular protected area. We surveyed tourists and foreign residents in Uganda to determine how pre...
There is a growing body of literature on the safe use of biotechnology and the need for an international biosafety protocol and national regulations to facilitate the safe development and transfer of biotechnology. Most of these studies, however, address the issue of biosafety from a scientific, legal, environmental and organizational perspective....
A Joint Research Activity of: Grain Marketing Research Project/Michigan State University, Sasakawa Global 2000, Ministry of Agriculture Department of Extension and Cooperatives, Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization
This paper contrasts the successful transformation of the oil palm sector in Malaysia with the stagnation of the oil palm sector in Nigeria, and examines the factors determining the different paths that the oil palm sectors took in these two countries with the aim of drawing lessons for future development and transfer strategy in Nigeria. Comparing...
An econometric approach using international and national yield trial data is employed to estimate a spillover matrix for wheat varietal technology. The global spillover matrix is estimated based on international yield trial data from 1979–80 to 1987–88, that include 195 international trial locations and 209 wheat varieties. The locations were class...
An econometric approach using international and national yield trial data is employed to estimate a spillover matrix for wheat varietal technology. The global spillover matrix is estimated based on international yield trial data from 1979–1980 to 1987–1988, that include 195 international trial locations and 209 wheat varieties. The locations were c...
Currently, 1,150 scientists are carrying out wheat improvement research in developing countries with an annual budget of around $100 million. Because of the recent reduction in agricultural research budgets, this study marshalls evidence from 71 wheat research programs in 35 developing countries to address the following puzzle: what is the optimal...
There is a growing body of literature on the safe use of biotechnology and the need for an international biosafety protocol and national regulations to facilitate the safe development and transfer of biotechnology. Most of these studies, however, address the issue of biosafety from a scientific, legal, environmental and organizational perspective....
This paper is published by the Department of Agricultural Economics and the Department of Economics, Michigan State University (MSU). Funding for this research was provided by the Food Security II Cooperative Agreement (PCE-A-00-97-00044-00) between Michigan State University and the United States Agency for International Development, through the Af...
Questions
Question (1)
I have data from a bidding experiment where subjects were told that the random price will be drawn from a range x to y (inclusively). My data contains very few (like 7 / 3445) values of x and 2.4% observations of y. I also have about 1% of observations with values more than y. Given the small % of observations on the lower and upper bound values and some observations above the upper bound (which basically means, the subjects ignored the information provided and bid their actual willingness to pay), can I justify NOT using tobit and instead use OLS? Are there any papers out there that provide a rule of thumb on when to use (or not use) Tobit based on how small or large is the proportion of observations that fall on the bounded values?
