• Mind the Gap: Land Redistribution and the Economic Impact of Incomplete Property Rights

With David Wuepper

Redistributive land reforms have redistributed agricultural land in more than a third of the world’s countries in the last century, affecting more than a billion people. Macro-level research on redistributive land reforms is largely lacking. Using a novel dataset documenting the  instances of redistributive land reforms, the amount of agricultural land redistributed and the property rights granted to recipients, we analyse the relationship between redistributive land reforms and economic growth. Our results suggest a substantial negative effect of redistributive land reforms on per capita income levels and growth rates. The effect is reversed when redistribution takes place in democracies and when recipients of redistributed land are granted full property rights.

• Assessing the impact of a land restoration project in the Afar and Somali Regions in Ethiopia. 

With Guyo Godana Dureti, Wyclife Agumba Oluoch, Dominik Suri

In this project, we assess the impact of the constructed Water-Spreading-Weirs (WSWs) on a series of environmental and agricultural outcomes in the Somali and Afar regions of Ethiopia. We use data containing the geo-referenced locations of WSWs, construction periods and their costs. We identify these control sites through a semi-automated object-based gully network detection process using a combination of multi-source and multi-scale remote sensing data processed by different machine learning models. To construct measures of outcomes indicators, we rely on moderate-high-resolution satellite imagery products offered by cloud computing platforms to derive fine-scale proxies of vegetation/soil conditions on up to 10x10m grid cells. We specifically collect spatial data on various indicators such as Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Soil Surface Water Content Index, tree canopy cover and grassland cover, among others, in both treatment and control areas. By combining the project site database and spatial dataset, we then apply state-of-the-art econometric methods, namely synthetic control methods, geographic difference-in-discontinuities designs and combinations thereof, to causally estimate the impact of WSWs on outcome indicators.

• Do Green Parties contribute to a larger number of implemented agri-environmental policies?

With Johanna Baum, David Wuepper

In this project, we investigate the causal relation between the (i) participation of Green parties to parliaments, (ii) their number of seats within the legislature and (iii) wether the party sits in the ruling coalition on the number of agri-environmental policies enacted by national parliaments in Europe. 

• The effect of Large Scale Land Acquisitions on neighboring areas in Sub-Saharan Africa: boon or plight ?

With David Wuepper

In this project, we investigate the causal relation between the effect of the establishment of Large Scale Land Acquisitions (LSLAs) in Sub-Saharan Africa on the agricultural and environemental outcomes of neighboring areas. We first use data from the Land Matrix initiative to derive the coordinates of LSLAs and then derive their boundaries using Seasonal Trend Analysis (STA) and Breakpoint Analysis for Additive Season and Trend (BFAST). We finally exploit the spatial and temporal discontinuity created by the establishment of LSLAs to estimate treatment effects using high resolution geo-spatial data.

• Cesaro, L., Dries, L., Ihle, R., Marongiu, S., Peerlings, J., Poetschki, K., Schioppa, A. (2020). Report on the impact of         farmers’ engagement in Food Quality Schemes on farm performance. Deliverable D4.2 of the HORIZON 2020 project: Strengthening European food chain sustainability by quality and procurement policy (Strength2Food). EC Grant agreement no: 678024.

• Buttoud, I., Schioppa, A., Garavaglia, V., Belen, I., Rojo Serrano, L. (2018). Policy frameworks as an enabling environment for achieving international commitments on forests in State of Mediterranean Forests 2018, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Plan Bleu, Regional Activity Center of UN Environment/Mediterranean Action Plan, Rome, Italy.