The dissertation comprises of three essays on agriculture, gender and nutrition. Although
the essays are separate, they focus on interrelated topics and help build a case for common policy
prescriptions.
In the first chapter I examine gender differences in agricultural productivity using panel
data for Tanzania. At the national level there is weak evidence of mean differences in
productivity between male and female plots, but conditional on manager characteristics, plot
characteristics, inputs, crop choice, and household-year fixed effects, plots managed solely by a
woman are about 29 percent less productive than all other plots. The gap is similar even when
controls for plot and plot-crop fixed effects are included suggesting that plot quality or crop
choice do not fully explain the gap. An Oaxaca-Blinder type decomposition reveals that
quantitatively the most important factors explaining the gender differential are plot area and
labor. Women are able to obtain higher yields on smaller plots farmed with less male labor and
more female labor and thus cover the gender gap in productivity at the aggregate level. The fact
that observable factors of production matter most for the gender gap provides clear policy levers
to improve agricultural outcomes for women in Tanzania.