The commonly observed positive relationship between openness and growth is consistent with many theories of economic growth and thus does not provide direct evidence in support of any one of them. Quah and Rauch (1990), however, imply that increased specialization accelerates productivity growth...

Institutions can affect individual behavior both via their efficiency impact and via their risk reducing mechanisms. However there has been little study of the relative importance of these two channels in how individuals choose between simultaneously extant institutions. This paper presents a...

While theory strongly suggests that restricting development rights should reduce land prices, empirical evidence of this effect has been notoriously hard to obtain. Indeed, largely based on this difficulty a Congressional committee has recently recommended that tax benefits for such restrictions...

Policy interventions designed to simultaneously stem deforestation and reduce poverty in tropical countries entail complex socio-environmental trade-offs. A hybrid model, comprising an optimising, agricultural household model integrated into the �shell� of an agent-based model, is...

We revisit the hypothesis tested in Rodrigues et al. (2009) that the process of human development in Amazonia follows a boom-and-bust (inverted U) pattern. We showthat the 'boombust' pattern that Rodrigues et al. report is a spurious artefact of spatial correlation, driven primarily by the...

In this paper we put forth some empirical evidence from the Brazilian Amazon that the relationship between roads and land clearing may be much more complex than the conventional wisdom implies. In particular we find that in areas that already at least partially cleared, improving the road...