About

Ethan A. Ligon is a professor in the Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research primarily falls under the broad heading of applied microeconomics, with topics including vulnerability, risk-sharing, agricultural contracts, and intra-household allocation. Recently, he has been working on the theory and empirics of inferring levels of well-being from observations of disaggregate consumption expenditures, as well as developing measures of risk experienced by smallholders in low-income countries. His educational background includes an A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. His research interests encompass dynamic incentives and inequality, development economics, agricultural contracts, risk sharing, intra-household allocation, and applied econometrics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Econometrics
• Food science
• Socioeconomics
• Industrial organization
• Economic growth
• Agricultural economics
• Microeconomics
• Business
• Environmental economics
• Commerce
• Marketing
• Public economics
• Financial economics
• Macroeconomics

Selected publications

• Spatial Procurement of Farm Products and the Supply of Processed Foods: Application to the Tomato Processing Industry

  Review of Industrial Organization · 2024 · 3 citations

  • Business
  • Agricultural economics
  • Industrial organization

  Abstract Increased transportation and logistical costs in agricultural markets have affected the spatial allocation of production in the agricultural and food sectors of the economy. We develop a spatial model of farm product procurement by a food processor, which is designed to capture the effects of supply-chain disruptions on the spatial procurement of farm products in the processed food sector. We use detailed data on production and procurement from a large California tomato processor to estimate the key parameters of the model, which allow us to calculate the price elasticity of supply for California tomato paste production and describe how changes in energy prices and transportation costs for primary agricultural products affect the supply of processed food.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pilot Data for Study of Gender & the Adoption of Agricultural Technologies in Cassava Cultivation

  CGSPace A Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) · 2022-09-21

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  These are data for a pilot study conducted in Kenya which was meant to expose differences in the rates at which female and farmers adopted improved cassava cultivars, and whether these differences responded to different forms of engagement via extension activities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Consumption Subaggregates Should Not Be Used to Measure Poverty

  2021-09-06

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Frequent measurement of poverty is challenging because measurement often relies on complex and expensive expenditure surveys that try to measure expenditures on a comprehensive consumption aggregate. This paper investigates the use of consumption subaggregates instead. The use of consumption subaggregates is theoretically justified if and only if all Engel curves are linear for any realization of prices. This is very stringent. However, it may be possible to empirically identify certain goods that happen to have linear Engel curves given prevailing prices, and when the effect of price changes is small, such a subaggregate might work in practice. The paper constructs such linear subaggregates using data from Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The findings show that using subaggregates is ill advised in practice as well as in theory. This also raises questions about the consistency of the poverty tracking efforts currently applied across countries, since obtaining exhaustive consumption measures remains an unmet challenge.

  PublisherDOI

• Consumption Subaggregates Should Not Be Used to Measure Poverty

  The World Bank Economic Review · 2021 · 6 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Economics
  • Econometrics

  Abstract Frequent measurement of poverty is challenging because measurement often relies on complex and expensive expenditure surveys that try to measure expenditures on a comprehensive consumption aggregate. This paper investigates the use of consumption “subaggregates” instead. The use of consumption subaggregates is theoretically justified if and only if all Engel curves are linear for any realization of prices. This is very stringent. However, it may be possible to empirically identify certain goods that happen to have linear Engel curves given prevailing prices, and when the effect of price changes is small, such a subaggregate might work in practice. The paper constructs such linear subaggregates using data from Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The findings show that using subaggregates is ill advised in practice as well as in theory. This also raises questions about the consistency of the poverty tracking efforts currently applied across countries, since obtaining exhaustive consumption measures remains an unmet challenge.

  PublisherDOI

• Offering Postharvest Credit to Improve Farmer Welfare

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2021-11-09

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Return to capital in post-conflict context: Impact evaluation of asset and cash transfers in South Sudan

  RIDIE datasets · 2021-07-15

  dataset

  The Registry for International Development Impact Evaluations (RIDIE), is a project of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie). RIDIE is a registry of impact evaluations related to development in low and middle income countries. The purpose of the registry is to enhance the transparency and quality of evaluation research as well as to provide a repository of impact evaluation studies for researchers, funders, and others.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Impact evaluation of asset and cash transfers in South Sudan

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-06-16

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Data collected by BRAC to compare the effects of unconditional cash transfers and assets transferred as part of a "graduation program" in a pilot project in South Sudan, 2013-15.

  PublisherDOI

• Impact evaluation of asset and cash transfers in South Sudan

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2021-06-15

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Offering Postharvest Credit to Improve Farmer Welfare

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2021-11-09

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Offering Postharvest Credit to Improve Farmer Welfare

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2021-11-09

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Informal Insurance and the Extent of the Market

  NSF · $296k · 2004–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Brent Hueth

  Economic Research Service

  30 shared

• Laura Schechter

  22 shared

• Carolyn Dimitri

  10 shared

• Pierre Dubois

  Toulouse School of Economics

  9 shared

• Tim Worrall

  University of Edinburgh

  7 shared

• Jonathan Thomas

  Swansea University

  6 shared

• Élisabeth Sadoulet

  6 shared

• Timothy G. Conley

  4 shared

Education

• PhD, Economics

  University of Chicago

  1994