Climate change increases weather variability, exacerbating agricultural risk in poor countries. Risk-averse farmers are unable to tailor their planting decisions to the coming season, and underinvest in profitable inputs. Accurate, long-range forecasts enable farmers to optimize for the season...

We use individual-level data on all security trades, holdings, spending, and income from an online retail bank. We study the effects of an exogenous change in the displayed purchase prices of the mutual funds in individuals' portfolios. We find that individuals are more likely to sell what we...

We examine the origins, persistence, and economic consequences of institutional structures of agricultural production. We compare farms in the Argentine Pampas and US Midwest, regions of similar potential input and output mixes. The focus is on 1910-1914, during the international grain trade...

Common resources may be managed with inefficient policies for the sake of equity. We study how rationing the commons shapes the efficiency and equity of resource use, in the context of agricultural groundwater use in Rajasthan, India. We find that rationing binds on input use, such that farmers,...

Many rural households in low and middle income countries continue to rely on small-scale agriculture as their primary source of income. In the absence of irrigation, income arrives only once or twice per year, and has to cover consumption and input needs until the subsequent harvest. We develop...

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...

We study the influence of agricultural labor intensity on individualism across U.S. counties. To measure historical labor intensity in agriculture we combine data on crop-specific labor requirements and county-specific crop mix around 1900. To address endogeneity we exploit climate-induced...

The current study finds that societies which historically engaged in plough agriculture today have lower fertility. We argue, and provide ethnographic evidence, that the finding is explained by the fact that with plough agriculture, children, like women, are relatively less useful in the field....

The Acid Rain Program (ARP) cut sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from power plants in the United States, with considerable benefits. We show this also reduced ambient sulfate levels, which lowered agriculture productivity through decreased soil sulfur. Using plant-level SO2 emissions and an...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...