This paper studies the effects of descent rules on human capital accumulation. We exploit a policy experiment in Ghana … that introduced minimum quotas for the land that parents should devolve on their children. This policy differentially … affected ethnic groups depending on their descent rules: the matrilineal Akan saw a reduction in the share of land going to the …

and productivity growth is low. We apply our theory to the windfalls of Norway, Iraq and Ghana. The optimal size of Ghana …’s liquidity fund is tiny even with high prudence. Norway’s liquidity fund is bigger than Ghana’s. Iraq’s liquidity fund is … to invest. We illustrate how this can speed up the process of development in Ghana despite domestic absorption …

randomly gave cash and in-kind grants to male- and female-owned microenterprises in urban Ghana. Our findings cast doubt on the …

political activities of their workers. This generates an added incentive to own land and leads to inefficiently high land …

law of inheritance evolves from primogeniture to equal partition, as the primary source of wealth shifts from land to …

production, and household behavior over a lifetime. We develop a life-cycle model of a production economy in which land and … capital are used to build residential and commercial real estates. We find that, in an economy where the share of land in the …

. Using exogenous cross-country variations in land productivity and the timing of the Neolithic Revolution, the analysis … demonstrates that, in accordance with the Malthusian theory, societies that were characterized by higher land productivity and an …