Agricultural & Applied Economics

Home
Our Faculty
Michael Carter

Professor, Agricultural and Applied Economics
Director, BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP)

E-mail address:
Telephone:	(608) 263-2478
Fax:	(608) 262-4376
Office Address:	411 Taylor Hall 427 Lorch St. Madison, WI 53706

Prof. Carter's Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Prof. Carter's Personal Web Page

Research Interests

My research focuses on the nature of growth and transformation in low income economies, giving particular attention to how inequality in the distribution of land and other assets shape, and are shaped by, economic growth. While working primarily through the econometric analyses of household and firm level data, I have also made theoretical contributions in the areas of asset accumulation, institutional innovation and credit rationing. I carried out the fieldwork for his dissertation on the Peruvian land reform in 1980, and have since had numerous other research projects in Latin American, Africa and Asia. I have been working on South African income distribution dynamics since 1994 when I joined a team analyzing a national living standards survey. My current projects include analyses of the safety net features of property rights systems in China, the impact of liberalization on the welfare of the rural poor in Central America, and social capital and the reproduction of inequality in ethnically stratified societies.

Current/Recent Courses

AAE 732: Economics of Development 3

Recent Publications

Carter, Michael R. and Marco Castillo "Coping with Disaster: Morals, Markets and Mutual Insurance -- Using Economic Experiments to Study Recovery from Hurricane Mitch." in Christopher B. Barrett, ed. The Social Economics of Poverty: On Identities, Communities, Groups, and Networks. London: Routledge, 2005, pp.268-287.
Adato, Michelle, Michael R. Carter and Julian May "Exploring Poverty Traps and Social Exclusion in South Africa Using Qualitative and Quantitative Data" Journal of Development Studies 42(February 2006)
Carter, Michael R. and Christoper B. Barrett " The Economics of Poverty Traps and Persistent Poverty: An Asset-Based Approach" Journal of Development Studies 42(February 2006)
Barrett, Christopher B., Michael R. Carter and Peter D. Little "Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Aftica: Introduction to a Special Issues" Journal of Development Studies 42(February 2006)
Boucher, Stephen, Bradford Barham and Michael Carter "The Impact of Market Friendly Reforms on the Operation of Credit and Land Markets in Honduras and Nicaragua" World Development 33(January 2005)
Carter, Michael R. and Yang Yao "Market Versus Administrative Reallocation Of Land: An Econometric Analysis." in Peter Ho, ed. Developmental Dilemmas: Land Reform and Institutional Change in China. London: Routledge, 2005, pp.151-169.
Carter, Michael R., Peter D. Little, Tewodaj Mogues and Workneh Negatu "Shocks, Sensitivity and Resilience: Tracking the Economic Impacts of Environmental Disaster on Assets in Ethiopia and Honduras." Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. AAE Staff Paper Series
Mogues, Tewodaj and Michael Carter "Social Capital and the Reproduction of Economic Inequality in Polarized Societies" Journal of Economic Inequality 3(2005)
Carter, Michael "Agricultural Finance." in , ed. The New Palgrave. New York: MacMillan, 2007,
Carter, Michael , Galarza, Francisco and Boucher, Steve "Underwriting Area-based Yield Insurance to Crowd-in Credit Supply and Demand." Savings and Development.

Education

Ph.D., Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982.
M.A., Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1979.
B.S.F.S., Georgetown University, 1977.