THREE CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

The existing empirical literature on the relationships between land property rights and agricultural investment and productivity has provided weak and mixed results. The first chapter focuses on a unique land tenure system in Uganda, characterized by overlapping rights, to investigate causal relationships between perceived land tenure security and land-attached investments. To overcome concerns about the endogenous (equilibrium) relationship between tenure security and investment, we instrument for tenure security with the mode of acquisition. The empirical analysis reveals that land tenure differences significantly affect land-attached investments, but only for long-term investments - chiefly erosion-control facilities- which may enhance perceived tenure security. We, however, are unable to find a direct link between perceived land tenure security and agricultural productivity, augmenting the hypothesis that tenure security indirectly affects productivity via impact on land-attached investments. The existing empirical literature on risk management and household welfare requires further research on adoption of appropriate risk management strategies necessary to reduce exposure to risk accruing from natural and economic shocks. The second paper analyzes a unique program in Senegal to understand impact of multiple risk management tools on food security outcomes. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique was used to overcome selection concerns. The empirical analysis affirmed the importance of risk management strategies and revealed that participation in the program did lead to improvement in food security outcomes. Additionally, disaggregation by program components suggested that bundling interventions can equally, if not more, contribute to favorable food security outcomes since stand-alone interventions would not necessarily help those facing multiple constraints or would do so to a lesser extent. While it is clear that many government policies, including lockdown restrictions, will have a direct impact on the private sector, the breadth and depth of its effects are still unclear to many, especially the policy-makers. So, how does the COVID-19 pandemic affect world population and its productive capacity? The third paper makes use of Oxford University’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, together with World Bank’s Business Pulse and Enterprise Surveys to study 70 countries and address this question. Using basic scatter plots and panel regression, I conclude that variation in lockdown stringency, across the globe, impacted firm behavior and adaptations accordingly. The severe the lockdown, the higher the loss in average sales and employment-related responses experienced by firms. This study also discusses the forward-looking behavior/nature of firms and makes the argument that previous experiences pertaining to lockdown and COVID-19 plays on firms’ mind as they prepare for future decision-making regarding employment and production. Regarding this, I also show that there is a positive correlation between a firms’ future sales expectation and their current (sales) performance.