This paper reports on my replication of the 1997 Sachs and Warner resource curse working paper. Exact pure replication is achieved. A test for statistical replication shows that some of the Sachs and Warner results attempting to determine the cause of the resource curse are not robust to the country sample. A test for scientific replication shows that findings of the resource curse are not sens...

We estimate the development effects of electrification across Brazil over the period 1960–2000. We simulate a time series of hypothetical electricity grids for Brazil for the period 1960–2000 that show how the grid would have evolved had infrastructure investments been made based solely on geography-based cost considerations. Using the model as an instrument, we document large positive effects ...

The analysis of land investment and tenure security usually assumes land scarcity. However, some developing countries have communities with land abundance. This article therefore examines the effects of land abundance for investment and tenure security. The paper develops a formal test of land abundance and estimates a system of three simultaneous equations. The empirical analysis uncovers sign...

In this note we study the distortions in an endogenous growth model developed by Grimaud and Tournemaine (2007), where new pieces of knowledge are produced in a R&D sector and used to reduce pollution emissions. Using this model along with a realistic calibration, we conclude that the economy strongly underinvests in R&D, such that the policy maker would need to implement a strong tax-subsidy s...

This paper proposes that Colonialism is a major explanation behind today’s differences in Income Inequality among countries. We argue that colonies that received an important number of European settlers were characterized by a concentration of economic and political power in the hands of these last ones. Moreover, European settlers later achieved independence from the metropolis and were able t...

Environmental conditional cash transfers are popular but their impacts are not well understood. We evaluate land cover and wealth impacts of a federal program that pays landowners for protecting forest. Panel data for program beneficiaries and rejected applicants allows us to control for fixed differences and time trends affecting both groups. We find the program reduces the expected land cover...

In many developing countries property rights over rural land are maintained through continuous personal use instead of by land titles. We show that removing the link between land use and land rights through the issuance of ownership certificates can result in large-scale adjustments to labor and land allocations. Using the rollout of the Mexican land certification program from 1993 to 2006, we ...

The role of agriculture as an instrument for industrialization had been rigorously conceptualized in the 1960s and 1970s under the classical paradigm of development economics. After many implementation failures under import substitution industrialization policies and protracted neglect of agriculture under the policies of the Washington Consensus that followed the debt crisis, agriculture has g...

We show empirically using panel data at the plot and farm level and based on a model incorporating supervision costs, risk, credit-market imperfections and scale-economies associated with mechanization that small-scale farming is inefficient in India. Larger farms are more profitable per acre, more mechanized, less constrained in input use after bad shocks, and employ less per-acre labor than s...

We use a randomized control trial to measure how the free distribution of modern inputs for maize production affects their adoption in the subsequent season. Information collected through sales workshops where modern inputs were sold revealed that the average purchase quantity of free-input recipients was much higher than that of non-recipients; that of the neighbors of recipients fell in-betwe...