To explain the rise in Afghan opium production, we explore how rising conflicts change the incentives of farmers. Conflicts make illegal opportunities more profitable as they increase the perceived lawlessness and destroy infrastructure crucial to alternative crops. Exploiting a unique data set,...

When the state fails to supply basic security and protection of property, violent entrepreneurs not only seize the opportunity of plundering, but some also enter the protection business and provide protection against plunderers. This uncoordinated division of labor is advantageous for the entire...

Informal groups cannot rely on external enforcement to insure that members abide by their obligations. It is generally assumed that these problems are solved by 'social sanctions' and reputational effects. The present paper focuses on roscas, one of the most commonly found informal financial...

The author studies how landownership affects labor allocation, income distribution, and poverty in less-developed countries. He focuses on three prototypes of ownership classes: landlords, smallholders, and landless people. Agents are identical except for their ownership of assets. On the basis...

The authors investigate the effects of wage compression through centralized collective bargaining when growth depends on the continual reallocation of labor from older, less productive plants to new, more productive plants. They first study the compression of wage differentials that derive from...