This paper analyzes the determinants of local institutions and distribution of political power within a constant 'macro-institutional' setting. We show that characteristics of Brazilian municipalities related to institutional quality and distribution of political power are partly inherited from...

When agricultural productivity improves, farmers may react by expanding farming and further encroach on forest lands, or they may choose to intensify and produce more output with less land. We specify the conditions under which agricultural productivity can have such ambiguous effects on...

This paper examines the effect of nonagricultural land use on agrarian organization and land reform, providing a simple model to determine its policy implications and some evidence on its importance. It is argued that, if land-rental market is imperfect, there is a role for redistributive land...

Since Henry George (1839-1897) economists have been arguing that a tax on unim- proved land is an ideal tax on e¢ ciency grounds. Output taxes, on the other hand, have distortional effects on the economy. This paper shows that under asymmetric information output tax might be used along with...

Although the self-selection of emigrants is determined by differences in the returns to education, according to the celebrated Roy model, empirical evidence suggests that migrants tend to be favorably selected. This paper argues that financial con- straints might be useful to explain this...

We use plot-level data from ICRISAT to assess competing explanations for an old empirical regularity - the inverse relationship between land productivity and farm size. The presence of farmers who simultaneously crop multiple plots with different sizes is used to test (and reject) explanations...

This paper analyzes the determinants of local institutions and distribution of political power within a constant ‘macro-institutional’ setting. We show that characteristics of Brazilian municipalities related to institutional quality and distribution of political power are partly inherited...

The well-known inverse relationship between farm size and productivity is usually explained in terms ofdiminishing returns with respect to land and other inputs coupled with various types of market frictions thatprevent the efficient allocation of land across farms. We show that even in the...