Despite large amounts invested in rural roads in developing countries, little is known about their benefits. This paper derives an expression for the willingness-to-pay for a reduction in transport costs from the canonical agricultural household model and uses it to estimate the benefits of a...

Although sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the determinants of this contractual form are still poorly understood and the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from settled. The authors address both issues by emphasizing the role of landlord supervision. When tenant effort is...

In a setting where husbands wield considerable coercive power, forms of marriage should adapt to protect the interests of women and their families. The authors study the pervasive marriage custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of...

When contracts are incomplete, relationship-specific investments may be underprovided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. The authors find evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan. Using data from households cultivating multiple plots under...

Widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation, has been proposed as a means of limiting groundwater overexploitation, especially in the intensively farmed and water-stressed South Asia region. This paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted in...

Widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation, has been proposed as a means of limiting groundwater over-exploitation, especially in the intensively farmed and water-stressed South Asia region. This paper reports on a randomized control trial conducted in...

Groundwater exploitation has been instrumental in raising agricultural productivity and reducing rural poverty in South Asia, a region that accounts for nearly half of the global groundwater used for irrigation. Over the past three decades there has been an explosion of private investment in...

With soaring food prices in recent years has come alarm about rising poverty in the developing world. Less appreciated, however, is that many of the poor in agricultural economies may benefit from higher wages. This study finds that wages for manual labor in rural India, both within and outside...

Widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation, has been proposed as a means of limiting groundwater over-exploitation, especially in the intensively farmed and water-stressed South Asia region. This paper reports on a randomized control trial conducted in...