Alain de Janvry

Improving security of tenure over agricultural land has recently been the focus of a number of large land certification programs. While the main justification for these efforts was to increase productive investments and facilitate land rental transactions, we show that if access rights were tied to actual land use in the previous regime, these programs can also lead to increased outmigration from agrarian communities. We analyze the Mexican ejido land certification program which, from 1993 to 2006, awarded ownership certificates to 3.6 million farmers on about half the country’s agricultural land. Using the program rollout over time and space as an identification strategy, we show that households obtaining land certificates were 30% more likely to have a migrant member. The effect was larger for households with ex-ante weaker property rights and with larger off-farm opportunities. At the community level, certificates led to a 4% reduction in population. We show evidence of certificates leading to sorting, with larger farmers staying and land-poor farmers leaving in high productivity areas. We use satellite imagery to determine that, on average, cultivated land was not reduced because of the program, consistent with increases in agricultural labor productivity. Furthermore, in high productivity areas, the certification program led to an increase in cultivated land compared to low productivity areas.

What is the impact on voting behavior of strengthening property rights over agricultural
land? To answer this question, we use the 14 year nationwide rollout of Mexico’s land
certification program (Procede) and match affected communities (ejidos) before and after
the change in property rights with voting outcomes in corresponding electoral sections
across six federal election cycles. We find that, in accordance with the investor class
theory, granting complete property rights induced a conservative shift toward the promarket party equal to 6.8 percent of its average share of votes over the period. This shift was strongest where vested interests created larger expected benefits from marketoriented policies as opposed to public-transfer policies. We also find that beneficiaries failed to reciprocate through votes for the benefactor party. We conclude that, in the
Mexican experience, engaging in a land reform that strengthened individual property
rights over agricultural land was politically advantageous for the right-wing party.

Using data from a randomized experiment in rural China, this paper studies the influence of social networks on the decision to adopt a new weather insurance product and the mechanisms through which social networks operate. We provided financial education to a random subset of farmers and found a large social network effect on take-up: for untreated farmers, having an additional friend receiving financial education raised take-up by almost half as much as obtaining financial education directly, a spillover effect equivalent to offering a 15% reduction in the average insurance premium. By varying the information available to individuals about their peers’ take-up decisions and using randomized default options, we show that the positive social network effect is not driven by the diffusion of information on purchase decisions, but instead by the diffusion of knowledge about insurance. We also find that social network effects are larger in villages where households are more strongly connected, and when people who are the first to receive financial education are more central in the social network.

Improving security of tenure over agricultural land has recently been the focus of a number
of large land certification programs. While the main justification for these efforts was to increase
productive investments and facilitate land rental transactions, we show that if access rights were
tied to actual land use in the previous regime, these programs can also lead to increased outmi­
gration from agrarian communities. We analyze the Mexican ejido land certification program
which, from 1993 to 2006, awarded ownership certificates to 3.6 million farmers on about half the
country’s agricultural land. Using the program rollout over time and space as an identification
strategy, we show that households that obtained land certificates were 28% more likely to have a
migrant member. The effect was larger for households with ex-ante weaker property rights and
with larger off-farm opportunities. At the community level, certificates led to a 5% reduction in
population, and the effects were larger in lower land quality environments. We show evidence
of certificates leading to sorting, with larger farmers staying and land-poor farmers leaving in
high productivity areas. We use satellite imagery to determine that, on average, cultivated land
was not reduced because of the program, consistent with increases in agricultural labor produc­
tivity. Furthermore, in high productivity areas, the certification program led to an increase in
cultivated land compared to low productivity ones. We confirm the validity of the results with
checks on exogeneity of the rollout process relative to migration trends and on attrition in the
panel dataset we use.

Using data from a two-year randomized experiment in rural China, this paper studies the influence of social networks on the decision to adopt a new weather insurance product and the mechanisms through which social networks operate. In the first year, I provided financial education to
a random subset of farmers and found a large social network effect on insurance take-up: for untreated farmers, having an additional friend receiving financial education raises take-up by almost half as much as obtaining financial education directly, a spillover effect equivalent to offering a 12% reduction in the average insurance premium. By varying the information available to subjects about their peers’ take-up decisions and using randomized default options, I show that the positive social network effect is not driven by scale effects, imitation, or informal risk-sharing, but instead by the diffusion of insurance knowledge. One year later, social networks continue to affect insurance demand: observing an above-median share of friends receiving payouts increases insurance take-up at a rate equivalent to about 50% of the impact of receiving payouts directly. I also find that social network effects are larger in villages where households are more strongly connected, and when the people who receive financial education first are more central in the social network.

Agriculture has multiple functions to fulfill for the development of the Sub-Saharan Africa countries: a source of growth, an instrument for poverty reduction, and a contribution to the provision of environmental services. Yet, it is still used far below potential, with gains in land and labor productivity lagging below those of other regions. Successful use of agriculture for development will require greater attention by governments and donors, supported by scholarship and learning. The economics profession has an important role to play in helping re-conceptualize in a new paradigm the role of agriculture for development, design and evaluate new approaches, contribute to capacity building, and participate to policy advice and the mobilization of political
support.

We use administrative data from the lottery-based open enrollment system in Beijing middle schools to obtain unbiased estimates of school fixed effects on student performance. To do this, we classify children in selection channels, with each channel representing a unique succession of lotteries through
which a child was assigned to a school, given his parents’ choice of schools and the schools’ enrollment quotas. Within each channel, students had an equal probability of being assigned to a given school. Results show that school fixed effects are strong determinants of student performance. These fixed effects are shown to be highly correlated with teacher qualifications measured in particular by their official ranks. Furthermore, teacher qualifications have about the same predictive power for student test scores as do school fixed effects, implying that observable aspects ofschool quality almost fully account for the role ofschool quality differences.

We study the eects of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program Progresa (now re-named Oportunidades) on school enrollment and performance in passing grades. We develop a theoretical framework of the dynamics of the educational process including endogeneity and uncertainty of school performance. It provides predictions for the eect on performance of a cash transfer conditional on school attendance. Using a randomized experiment implemented under Progresa, we identify the eect of the program on enrollment and performance in the first year of the program, before performance-induced dynamic selection took place. We find that the program had a positive impact on school enrollment at all grade levels whereas for performance it had a positive impact at the primary school level but a negative impact at the secondary level. According to our theoretical framework, this can be due to the disincentives created by termination of program benets after the third year of secondary school.

Governments need the capacity to manage price instability and its social consequences; but in countries where people suffer most, they are least able to respond, because of limited fiscal and institutional resources. This article argues that policies used by middle- and high-income countries are unsuitable for poorer, agricultural countries; it recommends instead that these nations promote broader access to land and raise land productivity. The authors explain why instruments used by richer countries, such as those that control prices and cheapen food, fail in poorer countries. They describe the features of smallholder farmers in poorer countries, drawing upon evidence from India, Peru, and Guatemala to demonstrate how subsistence farming can be part of policy responses to the distress of a food crisis in both the short and medium term. They call upon donors to improve their understanding of and support for smallscale, subsistence-oriented farming.