Heterogeneous Impact Dynamics of a Rural Business Development Program in Nicaragua

Michael Carter, Emilia Tjernström and Patricia Toledo

No 22628, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the impacts of a rural development program designed to boost the income of the smallfarm sector in Nicaragua. Exploiting the random assignment of treatment, we find statistically and economically significant impacts on gross farm income and investment in productive farm capital. Using continuous treatment estimation techniques, we examine the evolution of program impacts over time and find that the estimated income increase persists and that the impacts on productive capital stock continue to rise even after the program concluded. Additionally, panel quantile methods reveal striking heterogeneity of program impacts on both income and investment. We show that this heterogeneity is not random and that there appear to exist low-performing household types who benefit little from the program, whereas high-performing (upper quantile) households benefit more substantially. Analysis using generalized random forests, a machine learning algorithm, points toward greater program impacts for households who were disadvantaged at baseline. Even after controlling for this source of heterogeneity, we find large and persistent differences in how much different types of households benefited from the program. While the benefit-cost ratio of the program is on average positive, the impact heterogeneity suggests that business development programs aiming to engage farm households as agricultural entrepreneurs have limitations as instruments to eliminate rural poverty.

JEL-codes: I32 O12 O13 Q12 Q13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-sog
Note: DEV
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Michael R. Carter & Emilia Tjernström & Patricia Toledo, 2018. "Heterogeneous impact dynamics of a rural business development program in Nicaragua," Journal of Development Economics, .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22628.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Heterogeneous impact dynamics of a rural business development program in Nicaragua (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22628

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22628

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).