"This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an...

This paper examines the effects of deforestation on the welfare of rural communities in the Congo Basin. Using moment conditions of agricultural and forest exploitations, findings indicate deforestation significantly improves welfare both at overall-rural and agricultural household per capita...

Groundwater is a key resource for agricultural production globally. Increasingly rapid aquifer drawdowns--as well as the policies intended to increase their sustainability--increase costs to agricultural producers, with unknown consequences. This paper provides the first large-scale empirical...

We exploit substantial variation in land-market institutions across Indian states and detailed micro household-level panel data to assess the effect of distortions in land rental markets on agricultural productivity. We provide empirical evidence that states with more rental-market activity...

We document that nearly half of the global decline in agricultural employment during the 20th-century was driven by new cohorts entering the labor market. A newly compiled dataset of policy reforms supports an interpretation of these cohort effects as human capital. Through the lens of a model...