Agricultural & Resource Economics Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2739
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Item Essays on Political Economy of Development in Latin America(2024) Angulo Santacruz, Juan Carlos; Battistin, Erich; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is composed of three applied economics essays in the intersection of development economics and political economy. The first provides an economic explanation to the increase in the intensity of conflict. The second focuses on the effects of presence of illegal activities on educational outcomes. The third analyzes the effect of mass migration on voting behavior and political preferences. Chapter 1 studies how crime may be an unintended consequence of local development. The surge in global demand for Mexican avocados, particularly from the United States, has led to increased production and revenue in avocado-producing municipalities of Mexico. I show that these external changes in avocado global consumption patterns have influenced conflict levels in Mexico. Combining geographical variations in avocado cultivation suitability and fluctuations in avocado demand over time, I find a notable rise in homicides among agricultural workers in municipalities that are well-suited for avocado production. I demonstrate that this rise in homicides is not explained by the increased presence of drug cartels but rather heightened competition between cartels for resources in municipalities where avocados are produced. These findings suggest that cartels vie for territorial control, diversifying their income sources, including the avocado industry, in response to their relatively limited influence over drug markets and routes. In Chapter 2, I turn my attention to the production of illegal crops and how it affects schooling decisions. I focus on the case of Colombian coca leaves, the main input to produce cocaine. The country's main strategy to eradicate coca crops was the fumigation of herbicide until 2015, when the practice was banned. I exploit a plausible exogenous variation in the probability of being sprayed and the temporal effects of the fumigation campaigns as an instrument for the presence of coca fields. This temporal variation along with the cross-sectional variation of the spraying campaigns lead to an instrumental variable difference-in-differences. I use data on coca presence, eradication missions, and school outcomes at the municipal level from 2012 to 2018 to test whether a change in the presence of coca crops has an effect on schooling decisions. I show that my setting does not meet all the assumptions of the traditional difference-in-differences strategy but it fits those of Fuzzy Difference-in-Differences. My empirical findings suggest that an increase in the area cultivated with coca crops increases the high-school dropout rate and it has no effect on the enrollment rate. I rule out the possibility that coca presence crowds out other legal crops. Taken together, these results suggest that high school-age individuals are leaving school to work on coca related activities. In Chapter 3, I revisit the question on whether political preferences of voters are molded by the presence of migrants. I exploit the unanticipated inflow to Colombia of Venezuelans fleeing their home country's political crisis in 2016 and the onset of economic collapse. I compare the results of the 2018 presidential campaign in Colombia across municipalities with similar trends in electoral outcomes between 2002 and 2014 but different presence of Venezuelan migrants on the verge of the 2018 campaign. To address the spatial sorting of migrants across these municipalities, I construct an instrumental variable based on the distance from the closest ports of entry. I find that an increase in the presence of migrants in the municipality yielded a polarized voting behavior. I show that these effects are explained by an increase in the electoral turnout, and that the fondness of voters for Colombia's 2016 Peace Agreement Plebiscite was an important determinant of their behavior, which has been overlooked in past empirical work.Item INTENDED AND UNINTENDED IMPACTS OF GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS IN AGRICULTURE AND EDUCATION(2022) Castro Zarzur, Rosa; Leonard, Kenneth; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Agriculture and education are often considered crucial programmatic areas for governmentsaround the globe. In their search for economic growth and social well-being, governments across the developing world implement policies aimed at enhancing human capital formation and increasing agricultural productivity. In this dissertation I study the intended and unintended impacts of three types of government programs commonly used to improve outcomes in agriculture and education. In countries where land was distributed to collectives or groups rather than to individuals,concerns about how collective ownership may hinder agricultural productivity led to a ”second wave” of land reforms . In my first chapter, I study a land tenure transition from collective to individual land rights, and present evidence on the impacts of the Philippine parcelization program. Contrary to its objective, the implementation of this transitional stage has increased tenure insecurity, albeit without affecting agricultural productivity for most farmers in the short term. In turn, higher tenure insecurity has prompted land leases and a reallocation of labor to the non-farm sector. These unintended effects are likely due to a nontransparent and lengthy implementation process stemming from governmental capacity constraints. My second and third chapters are on education. Teacher quality is one of the most relevantfactors influencing student learning and affecting human capital formation. Attracting the best candidates to the teaching profession has become central to improving education systems around the world. In my second chapter, I assess the effectiveness of an ability-based scholarship on attracting top-performing students into teaching majors. My third chapter is joint work with Miguel Sarzosa and Ricardo Espinoza. We studyhow free college, a policy that has been gaining momentum in Latin America, affects self-selection into teaching majors. We find that free college decreased the relative returns to pursuing a teaching career, making it substantially less popular among relatively poor high-performing students who now self-select into programs with higher returns. We also find that the reform reduced the academic qualifications of the pool of students entering teaching programs, which can negatively affect long-term teacher quality.Item Essays on Education in Costa Rica(2021) Vega Monge, Melissa Vanessa; Battistin, Erich; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation consists of three chapters related to education economics. In the first chapter, I investigate the effects of class size on educational outcomes for secondary schools of Costa Rica. To assess the impact of class size, I take advantage of an administrative rule that sets caps to the size of classes in schools. My results suggest that class-size reductions have a positive and statistically significant effect on pass rates for students in lower secondary education. In particular, a reduction of 10 students raises pass rates by 5 percentage points, which represents a 5% increase in the historical pass rate in lower secondary education. I find that the effect of class size on pass rates in upper secondary education is statistically significant only for schools in rural areas. Specifically, a class-size reduction of 10 students in upper secondary education yields an increase of 11% in the historical pass rate for rural schools. Other measures of educational attainment, such as the graduation rate, yield similar findings, but these estimates lack statistical precision. Overall, results of this chapter indicate that rural secondary schools would benefit the most from class-size reductions. This finding is important to inform the ongoing discussion in the country on how to reform class size formation, and how to allocate resources and teachers across urban and rural areas.Chapter 2 is joint work with Erich Battistin. We study the effects of granting tenure (i.e., open-ended contracts) to primary school teachers using quasi-experimental variation in job offers arising from the centralized recruitment algorithm in Costa Rica. This algorithm matches applicants to school districts using Deferred Acceptance (DA) matching with non random tie-breakers, and school-teacher matches within districts are formed at random. We use the job offers resulting from this algorithm as instruments for the tenure status of teachers in regressions that adjust for the applicant’s “risk” of being granted tenure. Using teacher employment records combined with census and payroll data, we study the interplay between improved job security, better and more stable income trajectories, and outcomes at the school of employment after tenure. Our findings indicate that tenure has negative effects on future educational outcomes. There is, therefore, a definite need to reform the current recruitment process of teachers in Costa Rica to better target high value-added applicants prior to offer tenure positions. Finally, chapter 3 evaluates the effect of unconditional salary bonuses on upward mobility and future salary trajectories of teachers, as well as on educational outcomes of students. I take advantage of the centralized recruitment process in Costa Rica, where applicants may receive different wage offers from the same school district depending on which school they are matched to by the centralized algorithm. Specifically, only certain schools within the same school district are eligible for wage bonuses. To assess the impact of being employed in a school with bonuses, I use an event study design that exploits the random assignment of applicants to positions within school districts. My findings indicate that wage bonuses have a positive impact on the career prospects of teachers. In particular, I find that being employed in a school with bonuses induces a permanent shift in a teacher’s wage profile that represents approximately 5% increase in annual earnings. Also, this permanent change in compensation allows teachers to negotiate better job positions in the future. In addition, I document a positive impact on student learning outcomes two years after receiving the bonus offer.