Drawing from a robust identification strategy and household panel data collected before and after households were exposed to the Boko Haram conflict, this paper addresses the question of whether resilience capacity is an important factor in mitigating household risks of food insecurity due to conflict shocks. Using the non-parametric difference-in-differences framework, the paper identifies that the shocks negatively affect food security, but resilience capacity attenuates the effects. While resilience actively protects households from the adverse stressors, the paper observes that the pillars of resilience were also significantly decimated by the conflict, thereby weakening households’ long-run capacity to withstand future shocks. The results are prescriptively unchanged after adjusting the operating spatial distance of exposure or switching the measure of conflict exposure to conflict intensity represented as battle fatalities. These estimates align well with the various hypotheses of the resilience approach to sustainable development. It is, therefore, recommended that conflict intervention programs incorporate rebuilding resilience, which might help restore households’ ability to overcome future shocks.

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Budgetary institutions play a fundamental role in a country’s economic development and prosperity. First, the efficient and effective utilization of public resources, the strategic alignment of finances with a country’s priorities, and the maintenance of a sustainable fiscal programme all require sound budgetary institutions. Second, fiscal management and stabilisation policies, especially the adoption of counter-cyclical fiscal policies, are dependent on the quality of budgetary institutions. Third, budgetary institutions are also critical for ensuring government accountability and transparency and delivering pro-poor policies. According to Raudla (2014), budgetary institutions cover two aspects of institutional arrangements. The first is fiscal rules, which entail constraints in taxation, debt, and public spending, and the second is budgetary process rules, the procedures associated with public budgeting which outline the process that governs the preparation, adoption, and implementation of the budget.

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This study shows that women’s labour market outcomes in adulthood vary depending on the circumstance that prevails in the early stages of their lives. Exploiting the variation in drought incidences across Nigerian states with a nationally representative household survey for the periods 2008 and 2013, the result shows that women exposed to the drought at early periods of life see adverse labor market outcomes (including the probability of working and the standard of such work). Educational outcomes also declined with exposure to the drought, suggesting that poor human capital formation is a potential channel for these effects. Impacts on a related supplementary outcome, age at marriage entry, is also a consistent operative channel of impact. These findings further shed light on potential labor supply deficits for women from early life exposure to adverse climatic conditions.

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This study aimed at assessing different production functions for maize production in Tanzania. The maize yield performance, and agronomic – nitrogen use efficiency (AE) were evaluated under 6 rates of nitrogen (N) and water (W). Computations made for maize yield and AE shows that (i), the maximum potential maize yield increases with irrigation. (ii) less amount of fertilizer is needed to produce a unit of maize in the presence of high irrigation. Specifically, the maximum maize yield at 50 kg/ha of N is 6200 kg/ha and requires irrigation of 400mm, whereas at 100 kg/ha of N, the maximum yield is 5700 kg/ha and given 300mm of irrigation. Given the decrease in the fertilizer use efficiency, it implies that it is not plausible for farmers to apply optimum dose of nitrogen where there is water shortage. Moreover, two models, which are the quadratic function and the Mitscherlich-Baule function were fitted and compared based on a combination of agricultural, econometric and bioeconomic properties of the production process. The Mitscherlich-Baule function proved the best fit model. Results of the regression analysis shows that maize yield response to nitrogen (N) and water (W) exhibits diminishing returns. This suggests that when an extra unit of these input is added to the production process, less and less addition is observed in the total output. Based on the findings of this empirical study, it is plausible to recommend that farmers in the study area should be careful in applying the recommended dose of N where water is limited, because maize yield efficiency would not be maximized.

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This study examines the relationship between income diversification and agricultural intensification of rural households in Nigeria, using panel data models. We use the Inverse Herfindahl Index (IHI) to measure the income diversification options, while the relationship with agricultural intensification was measured using random effect instrumental variable regression. A control function approach was used to control for the potential endogeneity of the covariates. Empirical findings of this study indicate that income diversification is increasing among Nigerian rural households. This study finds that among other factors, off-farm income has a positive relationship with agricultural intensification. This study recommends, as a policy measure, that households should not only be encouraged to diversify their income, but should also transmit productivity gains from such diversification into agricultural intensification for the betterment of the rural economy.

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