We use data from Reserve Bank of India to study the impact of India's Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on finance-dependent activity. Loan volumes increase by 20-30% in districts along GQ and are stronger in industries more dependent upon external finance. Loan growth begins with...

The world has pledged to protect 30 percent of its land and waters by 2030 to halt the rapid deterioration of critical ecosystems. We summarize the state of knowledge about the impacts of protected area policies, with a focus on deforestation and vegetation cover. We discuss critical issues...

The European Union designates 26% of its landmass as a protected area, limiting economic development to favor biodiversity. This paper uses the staggered introduction of protected-area policies between 1985 and 2020 to study the selection of land for protection and the causal effect of...

China's land market features a substantial industrial discount: industrial-zoned land is an order of magnitude cheaper than residential land. In contrast to explanations centered on subsidies to industry or promoting industry growth, we emphasize the importance of future tax revenues from the...

A popular approach for estimating climate change impacts on agriculture is to rely on supply-side reduced-form regressions. These methods, which include the Ricardian approach, focus on how farmers and agricultural land market react to changes in climatic conditions, under the implicit...

The sharing economy for a wide range of goods and services is expanding across the world. To direct the benefits from sharing capital services towards small-scale producers, governments in the developing world are increasingly intervening in fast-growing mechanization rental markets. However,...

The novel insurance contracts for crop losses and livestock mortality that have been developed in low income countries typically protect against shocks in the male sphere of economic activity. Often overlooked are women, the particularities of their indirect exposure to this risk, and their...

Many countries subsidize agricultural inputs but require farmers to travel to retailers to access inputs, just as for normal purchases. What effect do travel costs have on subsidy take-up and input usage, particularly for remote farmers? We analyze Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP), and...

How responsive to health shocks are healthcare systems in the developing world? Developing countries are known to have both lower levels of hospital infrastructure and serious health shocks driven by air pollution. These shocks are transitory and may be marginal relative to other health demands,...

While cash transfers consistently show large effects on immediate outcomes like consumption, limited access to markets may mute their impact on productive investment. In an experiment in Malawi, we cross-cut cash transfers with an "input fair," designed to reduce transport costs to access...