Sponsored Projects for Undergraduate Research

Adverse shocks to agricultural production can have lasting effects on affected households stemming from loss of output and income and from the coping mechanisms households take to try to deal with that loss. While many papers consider the long-term impacts of weather shocks such as drought, flooding, or irregular rainfall, few consider the impacts of agricultural pests. The desert locust is considered the world’s most dangerous and destructive migratory pest. Large parts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa remain under threat from a desert locust outbreak that began in 2018 and has threatened the food security of over 20 million people. This project combines data on predicted desert locust risk, actual desert locust monitoring observations, and country locust control activities to estimate causal impacts of desert locusts on agricultural production in the immediate term, and on broader economic outcomes such as migration, poverty, and conflict in the longer term. These estimates will be useful to inform policy on coordinating cross-country locust monitoring, prevention, and control efforts.

We are interested in analyzing locust outbreaks both as an important shock in their own right, but also as a less-studied form of general economic shock. In the first sense, estimates of the costs of locusts outbreaks will be useful in cost-benefit analyses of locust monitoring and prevention efforts. In the second sense, understanding the impacts of a large economic shock is important for broader policy-making around how to support vulnerable populations and support resilience and recovery.