This paper analyses the empirical determinants of contract length, a key andyet neglected dimension of contractual structure. I estimate contract length andcontract type jointly using original data on tenancy agreements signed between1870 and 1880 in the district of Siracusa, Italy.The findings...

The choice of cultivation techniques is a key determinant of agricultural productivityand has important consequences for income growth and poverty reductionin developing countries. Using household data from Nicaragua this papershows that the choice of cultivation techniques depends on farmers’...

This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literatureon the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. Itaddresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between propertyrights and...

We show that the effect of eviction threats on unobservable investment effort can be positive. Wedemonstrate this apparently counter-intuitive result in a model of tenancy where investment by atenant in the current period raises the chances of doing well in the next period, and...

We look at disaggregated imports of various types of equipment to make inferences oncross-country differences in the composition of equipment investment. We make threecontributions. First, we document strikingly large differences in investment composition.Second, we explain the differences as...

[...]This research takes Iliffe’s suggestion seriously. For the student of Sub-Saharan Africa who has decided to explore a plausible route of causationbetween nutrition and poverty, the most urgent task is to disregard the initialdiscouragement triggered by the scarcity of references. The lack...