Why is agricultural productivity so low in poor countries relative to the rest of the world? Is it due to geography or constrained economic choices? We assess the quantitative role of geography and land quality for agricultural productivity differences across countries using high-resolution...

What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We exploit variation in historical inheritance rules for land traversing political, linguistic, geological, and religious borders in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally...

The hedonic pricing method is one of the fundamental approaches used to estimate the economic value of attributes that affect the market price of an asset. In environmental economics, such methods are routinely used to derive the economic valuation of environmental attributes such as air...

We assess the effects of land markets on misallocation and productivity by exploiting effective variation in land rentals across time and space arising from a large-scale land certification reform in Ethiopia, where land remains owned by the state. Our main finding from detailed micro panel data...

We develop a new measure of land quality by estimating weights in a Poisson regression of grid-cell population on geographic characteristics and country fixed effects. Aggregating to countries, we construct average land quality (ALQ) and quality-adjusted population density (QAPD). We show:...

The 1930's American Dust Bowl was an environmental catastrophe that greatly eroded sections of the Plains. Analyzing new data collected to identify low-, medium-, and high-erosion counties, the Dust Bowl is estimated to have immediately, substantially, and persistently reduced agricultural land...

Dynamic discrete choice (DDC) models are not identified nonparametrically, but the non-identification of models does not necessarily imply the non-identification of counterfactuals. We derive novel results for the identification of counterfactuals in DDC models, such as non- additive changes in...

This paper draws on a new state-level panel dataset and a model of domestic Dutch disease to examine the short-run and long-run effects of oil & natural gas, coal, and agricultural land endowments on state economies during 1936-2015. Using a flexible shift-share estimation approach, where the...

The slow adoption of new agricultural technologies is an important factor in explaining persistent productivity deficits among smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Farmers delay in particular the uptake of technology packages. Since knowledge constraints are an important barrier to...

Biofuel production is being promoted through various policies such as mandates and tax credits. This paper uses a dynamic, spatial, multi-market equilibrium model, Biofuel and Environmental Policy Analysis Model (BEPAM), to estimate the effects of these policies on cropland allocation, food and...