The project draws on household data from resettlement areas of rural Zimbabwe over the period 1992/93 to 1995/96 and the estimation of four behavioural relations: the determinants of crop income; the determinants of investment in livestock; the determinants of investment in agricultural capital stock; and the determinants of private transfers.

This information is used to construct a series of simulations in which drought relief received in the aftermath of the 1994/95 - the ex post response - is made available to households in the form of agricultural capital stock and extension advice - an ex ante action. Doing so is found to raise household welfare in non-drought years, but provides only limited protection in the aftermath of drought.