Description of Research Program
(click hyperlink above for comprehensive research site)
There are three basic, interrelated thrusts to my research program.
- The first concerns poverty, hunger, food security, economic policy and the structural transformation of low-income societies.
- The second considers issues of individual and market behavior under risk and uncertainty.
- The third revolves around the interrelationship between poverty, food security and environmental stress in developing areas.
These interests cross the boundaries between development economics, agricultural economics, environmental and natural resource economics, and international economics, and naturally draw me into related subjects in core economic theory and methods.
For a brief overview of my research motives and approaches, visit this Cornell Chronicle article entitled, "Chris Barrett takes a collaborative approach to the world's poorest people," published April 18, 2006.
My current research projects include:
- A multi-year USAID-funded cooperative agreement on Strategies and Analyses for Growth and Access (SAGA) focused on the constraints to broad-based growth, a bottom-up perspective emphasizing education, health and nutrition, vulnerability and poverty dynamics, and the voices of the poor. This project is in collaboration with Clark Atlanta University and the Secretariat for Institutional Support for Economic Research in Africa (SISERA).
- Through support of the USAID
BASIS CRSP we have just completed a multi-year, research project on poverty
traps and natural resource degradation in East Africa.
- Web site - USAID BASIS CRSP Project
- We just concluded a multi-year, Pew Charitable Trusts-funded project on the moral and social
dimensions of microeconomic behavior in poor communities, including a new
edited book on The Social Economics
of Poverty.
- Web site - Pew Project
- Several interrelated initiatives concerning poverty traps and environmentally sustainable agricultural development strategies in the low-income tropics, with a focus on eastern and southern Africa. Much of this work is within the context of a major interdisciplinary venture, the Cornell African Food Security and Natural Resource Management program, part of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD). We have enjoyed generous funding support from the National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and USAID.
- A multi-year, USAID-funded research project on
risk management among East African pastoralists.
- Web site - USAID Global Livestock CRSP PARIMA Project
- lLngstanding work on the effects of food aid on food security, sustainable development, and international trade, including a new book entitled Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role and a recent Cornell Adult University CyberTower Study Room on International Food Aid After Fifty Years.
- Empirical work on agricultural productivity and markets in Madagascar through a multi-year, USAID-funded project run by the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program
- Methodological work on agricultural markets analysis
- Work with the Standing Panel on Priorities and Strategies of the Science Council of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research on long-term research priorities in global agriculture to reduce poverty and hunger.