The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important part of the urbanization process in developing countries. Even though it has been the focus of abundant research over the past five decades, some key policy questions have not found clear answers yet. To what extent is internal...

This paper reviews the empirical and theoretical literature on economic growth to examine how the four components of the climate change bill, namely mitigation, proactive (ex ante) adaptation, reactive (ex post) adaptation, and ultimate damages of climate change affect growth, especially in...

Part 1 of the paper reviews recent trends in fossil fuel use and associated externalities. It also argues that the recent run-up in international oil prices reflects growing concerns about supply constraints associated with declining spare capacity in OPEC, refining bottlenecks, and geopolitical...

China has experienced a wide-scale and rapid transformation from an agricultural based economy to the manufacturing workshop of the world. The associated relocation ofthe population from relatively low density rural areas to very high density urban areas is having a significant impact on the...

Although climate policies have been so far mostly focused on mitigation, adaptation to climate change is a growing concern in developed and developing countries. This paper discusses how adaptation fits into the global climate strategy, at the global and national levels. To do so, a partial...

This paper assesses the relation between access to markets and cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa. Making use of a geo-referenced panel over three decades (1970-2005) during which the road network was significantly improved, the analysis finds a modest but significant positive association...

Since the industrial revolution, the economic development of Western Europe and North America was characterized by continuous urbanization accompanied by a gradual phasing-in of urban land property rights over time. Today, however, the evidence in many fast urbanizing low-income countries points...

This paper presents early evidence from the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization program. The study examines the links between land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The demarcation...

This paper proposes a theory of urban land use with endogenous property rights. Socially heterogeneous households compete for where to live in the city and choose the type of property rights they purchase from a land administration which collects fees in inequitable ways. The model generates...

This paper combines local election results and geo-referenced road construction data over 1993-2012 to investigate political bias in road infrastructure investment in a democratic setting, focusing on the case of Mexico. Using a regression discontinuity design, the paper finds strong evidence of...