Ownership and control are rarely synonymous. This article examines the factors motivating Mexican agrarian communities with forests to participate and invest in timber production activities, an opportunity that has opened in the past 20 years due to changes in Mexican forestry policy. We propose...

Global retail chains are becoming increasingly dominant in the global food trade, and their rise leads to dramatic impacts on agricultural supply chains and on small producers. However, the prospects and impacts of a food retail revolution in poor countries are not yet well understood. Here, I...

Although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts, empirical evidence on this phenomenon has been ambiguous at best. Household-level fixed-effect estimates from about 8,500 plots operated by households that own and sharecrop land in the...

This article uses a 13-year panel of individuals in Tanzania to assess how adult mortality shocks affect both the short- and long-run consumption growth of surviving household members. Using unique data that tracks individuals from 1991 to 2004, we examine consumption growth, controlling for a...

This article uses data from Madagascar to examine how an upcoming election or political patronage might induce governments to deviate from goals such as poverty reduction. Using a nationwide, commune-level data set, the article tests three competing explanations of how public goods are allocated...

Using detailed data from three simultaneous surveys of producers, traders, and exporters, this paper examines the transmission of international coffee prices through the domestic value chain in Uganda. We find that producer price fluctuations are inconsistent with constant transaction costs. We...

This article provides estimates of the economic impact of initial adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton and of its potential impacts beyond the few countries where it is currently common. Use is made of the latest version of the GTAP database and model. Our results suggest that if other...

This article examines the effects of nonagricultural land use on agrarian organization and land reform in an economy characterized by limited credit and land rental markets. The nonagricultural demand for land, under credit constraint, generates a potential mismatch between the distribution of...