Out-migration of college-educated youth from rural areas of the United States is a persistent trend and a salient concern for rural development practitioners. Using a unique dataset compiled from a survey of alumni graduating from a major Midwestern Land Grant University between 1982 and 2006,...

This survey reviews the existing literature, identifying the contribution of agriculture, schooling, and nutrition to economic growth and development over time and across countries. Particular attention is paid to the roles of improvements in agricultural technology and of the human capital of...

The link between measured risk aversion and the decision to become an entrepreneur iswell established, but the link between risk preferences and entrepreneurial success is not.Standard theoretical models of occupational choice under uncertainty imply a positivecorrelation between an...

Entrepreneurship is a hot topic both in academic and policy circles.1 There is a growingrecognition that entrepreneurship is a driving force in economic growth and development in bothestablished and emerging economies. There is also an increasing body of evidence suggestingentrepreneurship that...

We hypothesize that hog production can be characterized by complementarities between newtechnologies, worker skills and farms size. Such production processes are consistent withKremer’s (1993) O-ring production theory in which a single mistake in any one of severalcomplementary tasks in a...

This paper reviews the stylized facts regarding the levels of human capital investments and the returnsto those investments in developing countries. These returns are substantial and are pervasive acrossdemographic groups. Returns are comparable between men and women and between urban and...

This paper reviews the stylized facts regarding the distribution of human capital investments and the returns to those investments in developing countries. It then examines recent evidence regarding which policies can induce increased human capital investments in the most efficient manner, using...