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Understanding the potential impacts of climate change on economic outcomes requires knowing how agents might adapt to a changing climate. We exploit large variation in recent temperature and precipitation trends to identify adaptation to climate change in US agriculture, and use this information to generate new estimates of the potential impact of future climate change on agricultural outcomes. Longer run adaptations appear to have mitigated less than half—and more likely none—of the large negative short-run impacts of extreme heat on productivity. Limited recent adaptation implies substantial losses under future climate change in the absence of countervailing investments.

We use a randomized experiment in India to show that improved technology enhances agricultural productivity by crowding in modern inputs and cultivation practices. Specifically, we show that a new rice variety that reduces downside risk by providing flood tolerance has positive effects on adoption of a more labor-intensive planting method, area cultivated, fertilizer usage, and credit utilization. We find that a large share of the expected gains from the technology comes from crowding in of other investments. Therefore, improved technologies that reduce risk by protecting production in bad years have the potential to increase agricultural productivity in normal years.

Approximately 30% of the cultivated rice area in India is prone to crop damage from prolonged flooding. We use a randomized field experiment in 128 villages of Orissa India to show that Swarna-Sub1, a recently released submergence-tolerant rice variety, has significant positive impacts on rice yield when fields are submerged for 7 to 14 days with no yield penalty without flooding. We estimate that Swarna-Sub1 offers an approximate 45% increase in yields over the current popular variety when fields are submerged for 10 days. We show additionally that low-lying areas prone to flooding tend to be more heavily occupied by people belonging to lower caste social groups. Thus, a policy relevant implication of our findings is that flood-tolerant rice can deliver both efficiency gains, through reduced yield variability and higher expected yield and equity gains in disproportionately benefiting the most marginal group of farmers.

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 find that households obtaining certificates were subsequently 28 percent more likely to have a migrant member. We also show that even though land certification induced migration, it had little effect on cultivated area due to consolidation of farm units.

This paper analyzes the structure of water transactions using data on contract duration from California. Water rights in the western United States are transferred through short-term and long- term leases as well as permanent ownership contracts. We test predictions about the type of water contracts derived from the literature on economic organization by using ordered probit models to investigate the correlates of contract duration. We confirm that long-term and permanent contracts are more likely when investments in specific assets are required for conveyance. We also find that longer-term arrangements are common when buyers with uncertain water supplies purchase from sellers with more certain rights, suggesting that urban municipalities use long-term contracts to reduce risk. We do not find robust evidence supporting the hypothesis that short-term agreements are more likely when the costs of transfer to third parties are potentially high.

Farmers often buy water using fixed fees—rather than with marginal prices. We use two randomized controlled trials in Bangladesh to study the relationship between marginal prices, adoption of a water-saving technology, and water usage. Our first experiment shows that the technology only saves water when farmers face marginal prices. Our second experiment finds that an encouragement to voluntarily convert to hourly pumping charges does not save water. Taken together, efforts to conserve water work best when farmers face marginal prices, but simply giving an option for marginal pricing is insufficient to trigger water-saving investments and reduce irrigation demands.

California. Water rights in the western United States are transferred through short-term and longterm leases as well as permanent ownership contracts. We test predictions about the type of water contracts derived from the literature on economic organization by using ordered probit models to investigate the correlates of contract duration.We confirm that long-term and permanent contracts are more likely when investments in specific assets are required for conveyance. We also find that longer-term arrangements are common when buyers with uncertain water supplies purchase from sellers with more certain rights, suggesting that urban municipalities use long-term contracts to reduce risk. We do not find robust evidence supporting the hypothesis that short-term agreements are more likely when the costs of transfer to third parties are potentially high.

This dissertation combines three papers which are all empirical analyses of agricultural interventions in developing countries. I focus on how new policies, technologies, and institutions affect the behavior of small-scale farmers in both Mexico and India. The first paper focuses on the certification of agricultural land in Mexico while the second and third papers focus on technology adoption in rural India. Chapter 1, which is based on joint work with Alain de Janvry, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, and Elisabeth Sadoulet, shows that removing the link between active land use and ownership through certification leads to a reallocation of labor away from agriculture and towards migration. In particular, we use the rollout of the Mexican land certification program from 1993 to 2006 to show that households obtaining land certificates were subsequently 28% more likely to have a migrant member. This response was differentiated by initial land endowments, land quality, outside wages, and initial land security, as predicted by our model. Effects on land under cultivation were heterogeneous: in high land quality regions land under cultivation increased while in low quality ones it declined. Chapter 2, which is based on joint work with Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, and Manzoor Dar, shows evidence that risk is an important factor that constrains the decisions made by small farmers. More specifically, the chapter reports results of a field experiment in Odisha India that quantifies the effects of Swarna-Sub1, a promising new rice seed that effectively reduces risk by sharply reducing the susceptibility of the crop to flood damage. In doing so, the chapter offers novel evidence on the effect of a direct reduction in production risk on economic behavior. Specifically, access to this new technology leads to increases in area cultivated, fertilizer used, and the likelihood of using a more modern planting method. Also, the technology reduces precautionary savings of grain for consumption and increases the use of agricultural credit. An important implication from the chapter is that technological progress that directly eliminates weather-induced production variability offers a promising method of advancing agriculture in areas that are prone to extreme weather. Chapter 3 builds on the promising results in Chapter 2 by studying diffusion of Swarna-Sub1. I provide an experimental test of whether informal exchange of Swarna-Sub1 between farmers produces an efficient allocation. I report results on a field experiment, also in Odisha, to compare decentralized trade of Swarna-Sub1 through networks with an approach where demand was revealed via door-to-door sales. While 84% of farmers are expected to gain from Swarna-Sub1, only 7% adopt in networks. Conversely, 40% of farmers adopt when demand is revealed in door-to-door sales. Using variation across the sample in estimated gains in revenue, I show that 63% of the gains from door-to-door sales are lost with decentralized trade through networks. Frictions preventing interactions between farmers from different social groups offer an explanation for the results. Sub-caste and surname association with suppliers are strong predictors of adoption in networks, but have no effect in door-to-door sales. The main implication from the chapter is that relying on exchanges between farmers to disseminate new seed varieties will not produce an allocation where demand is met.

A vast firm productivity literature finds that otherwise similar firms differ widely in their productivity and that these differences persist through time, with important implications for the broader macroeconomy. These stylized facts derive largely from studies of manufacturing firms in wealthy countries, and thus have unknown relevance for the world's most common firm type, the smallholder farm. We use detailed micro data from over 12,000 smallholder farms and nearly 100,000 agricultural plots across four countries in Africa to study the size, source, and persistence of productivity dispersion among smallholder farmers. Applying standard regression-based approaches to measuring productivity residuals, we find much larger dispersion but less persistence than benchmark estimates from manufacturing. We then show, using a novel framework that combines physical output measurement, estimates from satellites, and machine learning, that about half of this discrepancy can be accounted for by measurement error in output. After correcting for measurement error, productivity differences across firms and over time in our smallholder agricultural setting closely match benchmark estimates for non-agricultural firms. These results question some common implications of observed dispersion, such as the importance of misallocation of factors of production.