IMEEL is currently being used in several projects, including:

Many human diseases have emerged from the infections of wild and domesticated animals. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is one example. The spread of HPAI, its actual impacts on agriculture, and its potential impacts on human health put this disease at the forefront of global human safety and development policy dialogues. A crucial step in identifying and controlling HPAI is the timely reporting of the disease by smallholders. However, the exact determinants of farmers' willingness to report are not well understood. Farmers may state their willingness to report when asked, but once there is an outbreak, they may still try to sell their affected poultry through informal channels. Therefore, one component of this project will use economics experiments to understand smallholder behavior pertaining to HPAI—especially as it concerns incentives to report. IMEEL will be mobilized to conduct experiments among smallholder groups in different communities in order to propose incentive-compatible reporting mechanisms.

Poor, rural farmers are often left out of the market because they face difficulties in competing with larger farmers who can provide firms with consistent quantities of high-quality products. Contract farming has proven to be an effective way to integrate farmers into the benefits of expanding domestic and international markets. Nonetheless, the benefits of contract farming have thus far been concentrated on a small segment of farmers—mainly medium-sized farmers and those who are relatively more educated. Part of the explanation may be the inability of small farmers to commit to contracts because—at the time of sale—there are incentives to renege on the contract due to market prices that are higher than contract prices. This project proposes three innovative contract structures to solve this problem and open markets to small farmers of high-value crops in Bangladesh, Peru, Tanzania, and Vietnam. The project will first utilize IMEEL to test stylized versions of these contracts in laboratory-type settings with representative samples of the farm communities. These results will be used to pin down the contracts that have the best chances of succeeding in the field. IMEEL will then be instrumental in working with local partners—such as Innovation and Competitiveness for Agriculture (INCAGRO) and Central Piurana de Cafetaleros (CEPICAFE) in Peru—to implement these contracts and then assess their impacts on farmer welfare. It is expected that the implemented contracts can be easily adapted for use in other countries.