This paper analyzes the productivity of farms across 370 municipalities in the Center-West region of Brazil. A stochastic frontier model with a latent spatial structure is proposed to account for possible unknown geographical variation of the outputs. The paper compares versions of the model...

Honoring Keith Griffin’s more than 40 years of fundamental contributions to the discipline of economics, the papers in this volume reflect his deep commitment to advancing the well-being of the world’s poor majority and his unflinching willingness to question conventional wisdom as...

Summary By paying particular attention to the local economic context, this paper analyzes the factors that influence rural non-agricultural employment and earnings. The empirical analysis is based on the Brazilian Demographic Census, allowing for disaggregated controls for the local economy....