Essays on Agriculture and Rural Development in Developing Countries

Abstract

In these three essays, I analyse the effects of institutions on rural development through the lens of natural resource management in chapter 1, agricultural productivity in chapter 2, and rural agglomeration economies in chapter 3. In chapter 1, we study whether the standard tragedy of the commons problem for groundwater is intensified by administrative jurisdictions, in India. When districts compete for groundwater, they exacerbate groundwater extraction and encourage water-intensive agricultural practices through their budgetary allocations. This leads to unsustainable levels of extraction and continued depletion of the water in the long-run. In chapter 2, we use the rollout of agricultural research centres in Indian districts to estimate the returns to location-specific knowledge generation on agricultural outcomes. The research centres influence cropping patterns, intensity of input use, and on-farm practices like intercropping with pulses. Access to the centres improves the yield of water-efficient crops like maize, pulses, and some millets, albeit at the cost of the productivity of crops like wheat, rice, and other millets which were the focus of India's green revolution. In chapter 3, we analyse the effects of agglomeration in village populations on the access to local amenities. We find that villages with multiple hamlets and caste heterogeneity are more likely to have access to amenities, but increased spatial dispersion between the hamlets reverse this effect. We posit that this is because dispersed settlements reduce the effectiveness of local governments due to competition for scarce resources.