Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions

An all-star Berkeley team consisting of Lauren Falcao Bergquist (Berkeley alumna), Benjamin Faber, ARE's Thibault Fally, Matthias Hoelzlein (Berkeley alumn), Edward Miguel, and Andres Rodriguez-Clare recently published a paper in Econometrica related to the implementation of policies that are designed to raise agricultural productivity. Titled "Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions," the paper develops a model of agricultural trade to quantify how local treatment effects change when policies are scaled-up.  Applying this framework to input subsidies in Uganda, they find that average welfare gains fall by about 20% when implemented at scale and that the policy becomes less regressive with gains increasing among the poorest households.