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 use the nation-wide policy of randomly allocating village council headships to women to identify the impact of female political leadership on the governance of projects implemented under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India. Using primary survey data, we find more program...

Rural electrification is believed to contribute to the achievement of the MDG. In this paper, we investigate electrification impacts on different indicators. We use household data that we collected in Rwanda in villages with and without electricity access. We account for self-selection and...

Natural and agricultural resources for which there is a substantial black market, such as coca, opium, and diamonds, appear especially likely to be exploited by the parties to a civil conflict. Even legally traded commodities such as oil and timber have been linked to civil war. On the other...

Heterogeneity in time discounting may reinforce the existing barriers to save and invest faced by rural populations in developing countries. We elicit a subjective discount rate for a varied sample of Ugandan villagers. In accordance with other studies, we have found the discount rate to...

In the 1990s, rural areas and small towns in the United States, which had been losing population, became the destinations for an increasing number of Hispanic immigrants and their families, slowing and in some cases reversing population declines. In this paper, we examine whether faster growth...

This paper uses regression discontinuity design to provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of a tax credit program targeted at rural areas in France, including corporate and payroll tax exemptions. We find no impact of the program on total employment or the number of businesses, and...

We explore the relationship between the level of village inequality in 1986, and the subsequent growth of household incomes from 1986 to 1999. Using a detailed household-level data set from rural China, we find robust evidence that initial inequality is negatively related to subsequent household...

This paper examines whether workers living in rural areas are more likely to be self-employed, compared with those in urban areas. We provide evidence for 35 European countries, using the European Working Conditions Survey for the year 2015. We also study the time devoted to market work, and...