I investigate how government restrictions on land markets impact the agricultural sector, and assess whether such restrictions can curb distortions that stem from the presence of market power. To do so, I develop a general-equilibrium production model in which large landholders exert market power in both land and labor markets, and where there are limits on land accumulation. Restrictions reduce the inefficiencies arising from market power, but also hinder productive reallocation, with the net effect on productivity depending on initial levels of land concentration. I empirically test the model’s predictions by estimating how a law imposing municipality-specific limits on landholdings in Colombia affected productivity, land concentration, and agricultural labor markets. To estimate the impact of the law, I combine a collection of rich micro-level data sources which include a newly built dataset on municipal agricultural productivity. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in restriction stringency across bordering municipalities, I find that imposing restrictions caused a permanent reduction in productivity and only modest reductions in overall land inequality. However, restrictions also increased both agricultural workers’ earnings and the employment share in agriculture, suggesting they were beneficial to landless wage laborers by reducing labor market power.

Geographic mobility is a key component of labor supply elasticity. We document a reversal in the relative migration elasticity of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. relative to native-born workers. In 2000--2012, Mexican immigrants' location choice was more responsive to local economic conditions, with the gap expanding over the period. This pattern subsequently reversed, and by 2020 native-born workers had a greater migration elasticity than their Mexican-born counterparts. This reversal is unique to immigrants of Mexican origin, does not correspond to geographic differences in immigration policy, and is not explained by the occupational or demographic composition of the Mexican-born labor force.

The novel insurance contracts for crop losses and livestock mortality that have been developed in low income countries typically protect against shocks in the male sphere of economic activity. Often overlooked are women, the particularities of their indirect exposure to this risk, and their socially constructed responsibility to manage family well-being. To fill this lacuna, this paper studies the effect of a low-cost intervention that reformulates a livestock insurance contract so that it directly addresses women’s risk and is sold in units that are commensurate with women’s expenditure responsibilities. We measure the effect of this contractual reformulation using a randomized trial amongst pastoralist communities in Kenya. Twenty-four percent of previously subsidized households that received the novel contractual formulation purchased insurance (without subsidy), compared to only 13% of previously subsidized households offered insurance under the standard male-risk formulation. Households that had not received prior insurance subsidies purchased no insurance, irrespective of the framing. Protecting women, their assets and those who depend on them will require a combination of smart subsidies and gender-intentional insurance contract design.

This paper studies the effect of weather shocks on rural land sales and the farm size distribution. Using a unique administrative dataset with transaction-level information and a land registry covering most of Colombia’s farmland, we show that extreme temperature events increase the frequency of land sales and decrease the average farm size within municipalities. These results are driven by small farms being subdivided and purchased by previously landless owners, with no evidence of weather shocks leading to the consolidation of small farms into larger holdings. The effects of extreme temperature on land sales are stronger in poorer and more isolated municipalities, where landowners are also less likely to take out land mortgages after a shock. To explain these patterns and explore how they can be exacerbated by underdevelopment, we develop an intertemporal, two-sector model where agents face a subsistence consumption constraint. Our findings highlight how climate-induced distress land sales are a relevant margin of adjustment that can have large distributional and efficiency implications for the agricultural sector of developing economies.

A growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first study of the long-term economic legacies of rebel governance. This effect is theoretically unclear. Rebel governance may generate incentives for households to expand production and accumulate resources. However, rebel rule may be too unstable to maintain such incentives. We explore empirically the effect of rebel rule on households’ economic resilience using a longitudinal dataset for Colombia. Results show a positive relation between wartime rebel rule and the ability of households to cope with weather shocks in the post-war period. Households in regions where armed groups were present but exercised limited or no intervention fare worse. This effect is associated with infrastructure improvement led by armed groups, their intervention in dispute adjudication, and their close interactions with local populations.

Several studies find that child labor incidence is higher in households with larger land holdings. The existence of this “wealth paradox” has been explained as the consequence of simultaneous imperfections in the land and labor markets. This work shows that although rural households in Colombia and Mexico seem to exhibit this same positive relationship between land and child labor, the wealth paradox disappears when individuals are evaluated using longitudinal data. A possible explanation for this is that the omission of idiosyncratic household preferences regarding schooling, child labor and land holdings in cross-sectional data analysis leads to an overestimation of the effect land has on these outcomes.