Although sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the determinants of this contractual form are still poorly understood and the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from settled. The authors address both issues by emphasizing the role of landlord supervision. When tenant effort is...

Groundwater exploitation has been instrumental in raising agricultural productivity and reducing rural poverty in South Asia, a region that accounts for nearly half of the global groundwater used for irrigation. Over the past three decades there has been an explosion of private investment in...

Formalizing land rights has been promoted as a way to encourage agricultural investment and stimulate land markets, yet little is known about the benefits of such policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the preconditions for success are less favorable. The analysis uses a large sample of plots...

We use a competing risk model to analyze environmental determinants of child mortality using the 1992 China National Health Survey, which collects information on cause of death. Our primary question is whether taking into account of cause of death using a competing risk model, compared with a...

A characteristic of China's "gradualistic" reform is that it starts first by trying not to confront many vested interests or to undertake any fundamental, radical restructuring of the old system, but rather to develop a new system alongside (or on the "margins" of) the old system. Therefore,...

Household fuel-use (HFU) patterns are strongly associated with multiple effects, including air quality, human health, and regional climate change. This paper presents the results from the first Chinese Environmental Exposure-Related Human Activity Patterns Survey (CEERHAPS), carried out among...