The Coase theorem emphasizes the role transactions costs play in efficient market outcomes. We document inefficient outcomes, in the presence of a transactions cost, in southern California land markets and the corresponding transition to efficient outcomes after the transactions cost is...

Higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production, particularly in the developing world. We introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age. Using data on test scores and schooling from rural India, we show that...

This paper reviews the effect of environmental disasters on migration. Although there is an increase of environmental disasters and migration over the past years, the relationship is complex. While some authors find that environmental disasters increase migration, others show that they have only...

This paper revisits the relationship between agricultural productivity shocks and the infant sex ratio in India and investigates how this relationship changes when households have access to government-provided employment opportunities outside of agriculture. When a household's preference for...

Like most other developing countries, China experiences huge migration outflows from rural areas. Their most striking characteristic is a high geographical and temporal mobility. Rural migrants keep going back and forth between origin villages and destination areas. In this paper, we show that...

We examine the impact of legislated land ceiling size on capital investment and industrialisation in the Indian states. India's land ceiling legislations of 1960s and 1970s imposed a ceiling on maximum land holdings and redistributed above-ceiling lands. These ceiling legislations, effectively...

Land requisition has been an important process by which Chinese local governments promote urbanization and generate revenue. This study investigates the impacts of land requisition on farmers' decisions of labor allocation between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. We argue that,...

Empirical studies of the economic effects of climate change (CC) largely rely on climate anomalies for causal identification purposes. Slow and permanent changes in climate-driven geographical conditions, i.e. CC as defined by the IPCC (2013), have been studied relatively less, especially in...

The issue of land inequality has garnered renewed interest in development literature due to its potential impact on the welfare of smallholder farmers. Poverty reduction is a crucial sustainable development goal, and a clearer understanding of the factors contributing to poverty is essential for...