This paper is the first to provide both theoretical and empirical evidence of farmland globalization whereby international investors directly acquire large tracts of agricultural land in other countries. A theoretical framework explains the geography of farmland acquisitions as a function of...

Foundational to the monitoring of international goals on land ownership and rights are the household survey respondents who provide the required individual-disaggregated data. Leveraging two national surveys in Malawi that differed in their approach to respondent selection, this study shows...

Does decentralizing the allocation of public resources reduce rent-seeking and improve equity? This paper studies a governance reform in Pakistan's vast Indus Basin irrigation system. Using canal discharge measurements across all of Punjab province, the analysis finds that water theft increased...

Salinity in surface waters is on the rise throughout much of the world. Many factors contribute to this change, including increased water extraction, poor irrigation management, and sea-level rise. To date no study has attempted to quantify the impacts on global food production. This paper...

This paper conducts an assessment of the global costs for expanding, upgrading, and improving irrigation infrastructure in developing countries, along different future scenarios toward 2050. It uses the GLobal BIOsphere Management Model, a partial equilibrium model of the global agricultural and...

Using a high-frequency mobile phone survey of food security conducted by the World Food Programme, this paper investigates how food assistance and access to food changed following the announcement of famine-like conditions in the Republic of Yemen. Among the mobile phone-using population, the...

The Republic of Yemen has undergone a profound transformation following the escalation of conflict in March 2015. There has been an increase in violence, a disruption in supply chains due to a tightening of the ports, and a decline in the general economic climate that has left a large share of...

Does financial compensation for providing environmental conservation, improve the food security of the rural poor in the drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa? This paper explores this question using data from a randomized controlled trial of a large scale reforestation implemented by the Government of...