We study the role of social learning in the diffusion of cash crops in a resettled village economy in northeastern Brazil. We combine detailed geo-coded data on farming plots with dyadic data on social ties among settlers, and we leverage natural exogenous variation in network formation induced...

In this document, we consider the effects of a land reform on economic and demographic growth by a family-optimization model with sharecropping, endogenous fertility and status seeking. We show that tenant farming is the major obstacle to escaping the Malthusian trap with high fertility and low...

We analyze the effect of land reform legislation on labor market dynamics in the Romanian economy. We show that the agricultural sector, a source of precarious employment, has become an absorbing state for certain categories of workers who lost their jobs in the nonagricultural sector. A random...

Inmates' informal code regulates their behavior and attitudes. We investigate whether prisons contribute to the spread of these norms to the general population using an exogenous shock of the Soviet amnesty of 1953, which released 1.2 million prisoners. We document the spread of prison norms in...

During the transition toward a market economy, Russian workers have had to face important structural changes in the labour market as well as dramatic changes in their real earnings. In the process, the wage gap between men and women has varied wildly over that period. In recent years, young...