Abstract: Do land market frictions cause misallocation in agriculture? In a field experiment in Western Kenya, we randomly subsidize owners to rent out land. Transferring cultivation rights to renters increases output and value added on the plots, consistent with imperfect land markets and misallocation, and induced rentals persist after the subsidy ends. Additional analysis provides insights on the magnitude and nature of land frictions—which include search, risks, and learning —and on the sources of gains from trade—which include differences between owners and renters in crop choices, productivity, and financial market constraints, but not in labor constraints.

Acerca del expositor: Lorenzo Casaburi is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. His main line of research focuses on agricultural markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on market structure, behavioral insights, and agricultural finance. He also works on state capacity, with an emphasis on tax enforcement and redistribution policies. For his research, he has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant), the Swiss National Foundation (Eccellenza Grant), USAID, and DFID, among others. Lorenzo holds a B.A. from the University of Bologna and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. Before joining Zurich, he was a postdoc at Stanford SIEPR. He is a Research Fellow at CEPR and a Research Affiliate at BREAD, IGC, IPA, and J-PAL.

Tiempo de exposición: 1 hora