Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Publication Title
The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Abstract
The agricultural sectors in many low-and middle-income countries remain highly vulnerable to weather risk, a vulnerability that will only intensify under climate change. The globally trending public works programmes have the potential to impact weather-related agricultural risk. I explore the impact of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) on weather-related agricultural risk. My empirical strategy explores the staggered roll-out of NREGA and random weather fluctuations. Using a nationwide panel of data, I find that NREGA makes crop yields more sensitive to low rainfall shocks. I posit that these results are consistent with a labour market channel, by which NREGA increases nonfarm labour supply in low rainfall years, and an income channel, by which NREGA leads to riskier agricultural practices. These results highlight the importance of understanding how social protection programmes shape agricultural risk.
Keywords
agriculture, India, production risk, public works, workfare
Volume
67
First Page
198
Last Page
223
DOI
10.1111/1467-8489.12505
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Taraz, Vis, "Public Works Programmes and Agricultural Risk: Evidence from India" (2023). Environmental Science and Policy: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/env_facpubs/21
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.