Guush Berhanu

Guush Berhane is a research fellow at the Development Strategy and Governance Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He joined IFPRI in December 2009 as a postdoctoral fellow, outposted at IFPRI’s Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP) office in Addis Ababa. He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 2009 from the Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands and his Master’s Degree in Development Economics from the Development Economics Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands in 2004.

Prior to his postgraduate studies, he has taught undergraduate economics at Mekelle University, Ethiopia, and participated in several research and policy discussions involving policy reform in the country. His research interests include microeconomic analyses of risk and insurance, rural financial markets, poverty and food security, social protection and safety nets, agricultural production and mechanization.

His most recent research work include impact evaluations of three big programs in Ethiopia, namely, Ethiopia’s Food Security Program – The Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the Agricultural Growth Program (AGP), and Cash Transfer Pilot Programmes. He has been part of a team that designed and implemented state of the art ‘randomized control trials’ study of index-based weather insurance for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. Most of his research work employs recent impact evaluation techniques combined with cross-sectional and/or panel data microeconometric methods.

Guush travels frequently to the field and engages farmers and field practitioners with in-depth discussions. Moreover, as part of his job at IFPRI based in Addis Ababa, he is involved in providing technical backstopping, support, and trainings to different government experts in and outside of Ethiopia.