The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi.

Across sub-Saharan Africa agricultural subsidy programs have again become a common strategy for combatting rural poverty, increasing agricultural production, and reducing food insecurity. Despite a large literature examining subsidies' effects on output and welfare, little is known about their political effects. This paper examines Malawi's Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme, one of the largest and most expensive programs implemented, which was launched by the government in 2005.

Local Demand for a Global Intervention: Policy Priorities in the Time of AIDS.

- The success of global health and development interventions ultimately depends on local reception. This paper documents local demand for HIV/AIDS interventions in Africa and seeks to explain patterns of demand using data from a country hard-hit by AIDS. As international agencies and national governments scale up HIV/AIDS interventions in Africa, I find HIV-positive respondents more highly prioritize HIV/AIDS programs, however, cross-national opinion data paired with interviews of villagers and their headmen in rural Malawi show weak prioritization of HIV/AIDS.

AIDS exceptionalism: another constituency heard from.

Amidst current debates over resources for AIDS, we examine the policy preferences of the people who are navigating AIDS in their daily lives. Survey and ethnographic data on the prioritization of HIV/AIDS interventions were collected in a longitudinal cohort study in rural Malawi. Study participants gave higher priority to problems other than AIDS.

An offer you can't refuse? Provider-initiated HIV testing in antenatal clinics in rural Malawi.

International organizations promote provider-initiated, 'routine' HIV testing of pregnant women seeking antenatal care as an effort to curb mother-to-child transmission. We offer an account of the perceptions of HIV testing at antenatal clinics in rural Malawi. Although it is both international and Government of Malawi policy that women must be explicitly informed of their right to refuse testing, analysis of in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and evidence from observational field journals show that rural Malawians do not perceive HIV testing as a choice, but rather as compulsory in order to receive antenatal care.