Rural roads, agricultural extension, and productivity

Mesay Gebresilasse

Journal of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 162, issue C

Abstract: Low agricultural productivity is a persistent challenge for developing economies. Expansions of rural roads and agricultural extension, separately, have been proposed as solutions with mixed effectiveness. In this paper, I show that it is critical to consider roads and extension together due to their strong complementarities. I study the concurrent but independent expansions of rural roads and extension in Ethiopia, and find that, while ineffective in isolation, access to both a road and extension increases productivity by 6%. The key mechanisms include increased take up of advice, adoption of modern inputs, and advantageous shifts in crop choice and labor allocation.

Keywords: Rural roads; Extension; Productivity; Ethiopia; Market access; Agricultural management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O13 O18 Q12 Q16 R23 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387823000032
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:deveco:v:162:y:2023:i:c:s0304387823000032

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103048

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().