ROADS AND POVERTY IN RURAL LAOS: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS

The relationship between poverty incidence and road development is analyzed econometrically in this paper, in the context of rural Laos. Between 1997–1998 and 2002–2003, rural poverty incidence in Laos declined by 9.5% of the rural population. Approximately 13% of this decline can be attributed to improved road access. There is now a high return to providing dry weather access to the most isolated households of Laos, those with no road access at all. They constitute 31.6% of all rural households in Laos and are being left behind by the development of the market economy.     

Productivity in Indonesian agriculture: Impacts of domestic and international research

Total factor productivity growth contributed 38% of Indonesia's agricultural output growth from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. This study uses time series data analysed with an error correction mechanism to examine the contribution that Indonesian publicly funded agricultural research made to this outcome, allowing for other possible determinants of productivity growth, including international agricultural research, extension, government price policy and weather. The results imply a 27% real annual rate of return from a marginal increase in Indonesian agricultural research expenditure. Indonesia's public agricultural research explains virtually all of its agricultural total factor productivity growth between 1975 and 2006.