Africa Table - Her Braids or My Beer? Couples' Intra-household Productive Resources Distribution in Rural Togo

Join the Center for African Studies for our weekly lunchtime lecture series.

Speaker: Marie Christine Apedo-Amah, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Marie Christine Apedo-Amah is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She is currently working on the Transparency Accountability and Citizen Engagement (TRACE) Initiative for West-Africa at the Stanford Institute for Policy and Economic Research (SIEPR). She obtained her PhD in development economics at Aix Marseille School of Economics (AMSE) in France. Her research  focuses on Institutions and Development. She has especially worked on Non-Profit Organizations' behavior in development projects, and corruption in public goods provision. She has also studied the efficiency of aid channels such as project aid and budget support. She is particularly interested in how the institutional environment affects public service delivery in developing countries. She has recently conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment on the determinants of productive decision-making in agricultural households in rural Togo, and how they shape producers' response to agricultural projects.

Gender-oriented agricultural programs targeting women often disregard men’s role in productive resources allocation within the household. This talk presents the results of a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted on couples of cotton producers in rural Togo. We will discuss the determinants of resources allocation within the couple and how they may affect the success of gender-oriented agricultural programs.