Public good provision and deliberative democracy: evidence from Malawi
What are the conditions community-driven development programmes are most likely to succeed in to assist smallholder farmers?

Dr Annemie Maertens will present the results of a public goods game with farmer clubs in Malawi to determine the socio-political conditions that increase cooperation.
By experimentally varying the degree of democracy in the farmer clubs, while continuing to measure the strength of social ties, the research team found out whether democratically run clubs contribute more than clubs with leader driven decision-making, using a public goods game with farmer clubs, a household survey and qualitative data from focus group interviews.
3ie partially funded this study as part of an ongoing grant under its Agricultural Innovations Evidence Programme. This event is co-organised by 3ie and the London International Development Centre (LIDC), as part of the monthly ‘What works in international development’ seminar series, which explores the findings of newly-published systematic reviews.
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Melissa Cooperman/IFPRI via Flickr (CC BY NC 2.0)
Dr Annemie Maertens
Dr Annemie Maertens is a development economist and senior lecturer at the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex. She obtained her PhD from Cornell University in 2010. Before embarking on a career as an economist, she was an agricultural engineer, with an interest in tropical agricultural systems. She uses the tools of social and behavioural economics to understand poverty dynamics in rural settings in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on agricultural technology adoption, agricultural markets and investment in education.
Chair: Mark Engelbert
Evaluation Specialist
3ie's Systematic Reviews Office
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