Kate Ambler
Senior Research Fellow, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, IFPRI
Kate Ambler is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit at IFPRI. Kate’s research broadly focuses on interventions that can increase incomes for smallholders and other microenterprises in agrifood value chains, with an emphasis on the inclusion of women. This includes work on innovations in agricultural finance, regulatory solutions for food safety, and programming in fragile settings,. She also studies policies and programs that can improve women’s agency, migration and remittances, and measurement issues.
Kate has experience with research conducted using randomized controlled trials, framed field experiments, and secondary data, and she has worked on projects in Africa south of the Sahara, Central and South America, and Asia. She has also been an adjunct professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She completed a PhD in economics at the University of Michigan, specializing in development economics and economic demography.
Recent work by Kate Ambler
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The case for tackling multiple constraints for smallholder farmers
A four-year study of smallholder farmers in Malawi finds that combining cash transfers with intensive agricultural extension produces larger and more durable gains in crop production and household consumption than either intervention alone.
Published 20.05.26
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Including women in commercial agriculture benefits the whole household
Formally including Ugandan women in commercial agriculture – through contract ownership or behaviour-change interventions – can increase women’s empowerment without reducing productivity, and with positive spillovers for household welfare and gender ...
Published 27.01.26