This paper investigates the food security and nutritional status of formerly displaced households (HHs). Using the 2006 Core Welfare Indicator Survey for Burundi we compare their food intake and their level of expenses with that of their non-displaced neighbours. We test whether it is the duration of displacement that matters for current food security and nutritional status or the time lapsed since returning home. We use log-linear as well as propensity score matching and an instrumental variable-approach to control for self-selection bias. We find that the individuals and HHs who returned home just before the time of the survey are worse off compared to those who returned several years earlier. On average, the formerly displaced have 5 per cent lower food expenses and 6 per cent lower calorie intake. Moreover, we find evidence in favour of duration of displacement as the main mechanisms through which displacement affects HH welfare. Results are robust after controlling for self-selection bias. Despite international, government and NGO assistance, the welfare of recent returnees is lagging seriously behind in comparison with the local non-displaced populations.

Trees on farms provide livelihood benefits to households across Africa. To date, however, evidence on how such trees affect household well-being over time remains lacking. Evidence is especially sparse at the national level where it has particular value for policymaking. To address this knowledge gap, we use nationally representative panel data from Uganda to examine how on-farm tree growing may affect two dimensions of household well-being: 1) income and 2) food security and nutrition. We analyzed household-level data from the 2005–2006, 2010–2011, and 2013–2014 Ugandan National Panel Surveys, including measures on adoption and abandonment of trees on farms, demographic factors, and other socioeconomic variables. We used a fixed-effects panel specification and probabilistic models to assess the relationship between the area devoted to trees on farms and household income and nutrition outcomes for 1,395 households across Uganda. Our results show that growing trees especially fruit trees, was associated with improvements in both total household consumption and nutritional outcomes (proxied by weight and wasting status of children younger than 5 years old). These findings suggest the important role trees on farms can play in poverty reduction and sustainable development efforts in Uganda and other countries in Africa and beyond.

Given institutional incentives, is entrepreneurship always good for the economy? While the literature about its benefits for society is extensive, a salient lacuna exists regarding the negative side of entrepreneurship. This study, hence, explores how institutions condition destructive entrepreneurial activity, which is linked to the economic growth of Colombian regions. Institutional economics helps us understand the underlying relationships, which are tested through 3SLS, on a sample of 1122 municipalities in Colombia. We show that a negative effect of new coca crops (as destructive entrepreneurship) on regional economic growth exists, but it is conditioned by the institutional reinforcement and integral performance index (as formal institutions), as well as historical land conflict and hectares of land belonging to religious sects (as informal institutions). Other forms of (destructive) entrepreneurship are therefore envisioned and put in place for the continued development of the current literature and the management of public policy.

A community food environment plays an essential role in explaining the healthy lifestyle patterns of its community members. However, there is a lack of compelling quantitative approaches to evaluate these environments. This study introduces and validates a new tool named the facility list coder (FLC), whose purpose is to assess food environments based on data sources and classification algorithms. Using the case of Mataró (Spain), we randomly selected 301 grids areas (100 m²), in which we conducted street audits in order to physically identify all the facilities by name, address, and type. Then, audit-identified facilities were matched with those automatically-identified and were classified using the FLC to determine its quality. Our results suggest that automatically-identified and audit-identified food environments have a high level of agreement. The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) estimates and their respective 95% confidence intervals for the overall sample yield the result “excellent” (ICC ≥ 0.9) for the level of reliability of the FLC.