A recent literature in development economics has focused renewed attention on land redistribution. Driven in part by political events in countries like Zimbabwe, the literature has sought to understand the economic implications of land reform. Much of this literature focuses on credit market...

As many as one million deaths annually are attributed to malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes. The heaviest burdens of malaria are found in poor tropical countries, where medical systems are often ill-equipped to treat the sick, and where public health programs may lack the...

Most developing countries are far less productive in agriculture than in the non-agriculture sector compared to the rest of the world. Standard Ricardian trade theory predicts that developing countries should be large importers of food and should have few workers in agriculture. The data is in...

We document several new facts regarding urbanization and structural change in developing countries and develop a model that can account for them. Most developing countries follow a standard pattern: urbanization is a by-product of either "push" from agricultural productivity growth or a "pull"...

This paper reports the results of a major study of the impact of international agricultural research, covering eleven crops in all major regions of the developing world, over the period 1960-2000. Although much of the "common wisdom" concerning the Green Revolution suggests that gains from...