Marc F Bellemare, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics

Please note: Marc has left the "Economics" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

There are three main axes to my research, all pertaining to developing countries. The first has to do with the use of contracts in developing countries. More specifically, I am interested in testing the implications of contract theory using microeconomic data. As such, I have worked and am working on sharecropping contracts and on the use of monitoring as a means to reduce information asymmetries in contract farming in Madagascar. The second has to do with the market participation of households. Agricultural households are both consumption and production units. They can thus be net buyers of given commodities, autarkic with respect to them, or net sellers of them. More specifically, I am interested in what determines the nature and extent of household market participation. As such, I have worked on livestock markets in Eastern Africa and am working on The third has to do with price risk aversion and the welfare effects of price fluctuations on agricultural households and firms in developing countries. Economic theory states that certain agents will be price risk-averse while others will remain price risk-neutral, and others still will be price risk-loving. As such, I am working on a whole new research agenda pertaining to price risk aversion along with co-authors Chris Barrett and David Just.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	221 Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Office Phone:	(919) 613-7405
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/PublicPolicy/faculty/marc.bellemare

Office Hours:

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:30-6:00

Education:

Ph.D. (Applied Economics)	Cornell University	2006
M.Sc. (Economics)	Universite de Montreal	2001
B.Sc.	Universite de Montreal	1999

Specialties:

Development Economics
Econometrics

Areas of Interest:

Development Economics
Agricultural Economics
Applied Econometrics
Contract Theory
Applied Micro

Keywords:

Development Economics • Agricultural Economics • Applied Econometrics • Contract Theory • Applied Micro

Curriculum Vitae

Current Ph.D. Students  

• Eva Csaky  
• Zachary S. Brown  
• Shouyue Yu  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. M.F. Bellemare, Sharecropping, Insecure Land Rights, and Land Titling Policies: A Case Study of Lac Alaotra, Madagascar, Development Policy Review, vol. 29 no. 1 (2009), pp. 87-106
2. M.F. Bellemare and C.B. Barrett, An Ordered Tobit Model of Market Participation: Evidence from Kenya and Ethiopia, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 88 no. 2 (2006), pp. 324-337
3. Barrett, Christopher B., Marc F. Bellemare, and Sharon M. Osterloh, Household-Level Livestock Marketing Behavior Among Northern Kenyan and Southern Ethiopian Pastoralists, in Pastoral Livestock Marketing in Eastern Africa: Research and Policy Challenges, edited by John McPeak and Peter D. Little (2006), pp. 15-38, Warwickshire, UK: ITDG Publishing
4. M.F. Bellemare, C.B. Barrett, and D.R. Just, The Welfare Impacts of Commodity Price Fluctuations: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia (December, 2010) [papers.cfm]  [abs]
5. M.F. Bellemare, The (Im)possibility of Reverse Share Tenancy (2008) [papers.cfm]  [abs]