My research lies at the intersection of political economy, law and economics, and development economics. I study how property-rights regimes and kinship institutions evolve in response to transaction costs, climate shocks, and political incentives, and how these institutional changes shape economic outcomes.
More broadly, my work examines how institutions governing ownership, inheritance, and access to productive resources emerge, adapt, and persist over time. Across both contemporary and historical settings, I combine theory and empirics to study the relationship between institutional change, cooperation, and development.
Working Paper
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5409366]
Kinship structures patterns of human relationships within the family, yet the economic logic behind the emergence of matrilineal and patrilineal succession remains poorly understood. This paper develops an incomplete-contracting model in which society designs gender-based property rights to maximize welfare when males and females jointly invest in farming and home production. The model shows that society embraces matrilineal succession when females are less productive than males and patriliny otherwise, because property-rights protection is used to shape ex post bargaining power and sustain efficient cooperation. I test this prediction on a novel regional panel covering the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires over 600–1550 CE, and show that climate-driven changes in the relative productivity of plow-positive and plow-negative crops are associated with reforms in kinship institutions across identification strategies. The paper therefore explains kinship systems as endogenous institutional responses rather than fixed cultural traits.
Working Paper
Yasir Amin and Carmine Guerriero
While the direct economic effects of adverse climate shocks are well known, their indirect institutional effects remain poorly understood. This paper tests the idea that adverse climate shocks push elites who cannot commit to future transfers to strengthen non-elites’ property rights to land in order to secure cooperation in joint farming investments. Using a panel of 38 of the 42 most agricultural developing countries over 1960–2018, the paper finds that drought severity has both a negative direct effect on agricultural output and a positive indirect effect on institutions protecting land rights. The results are robust across several identification strategies.
Economics of Governance (2025)
[Article link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10101-025-00334-2]
This paper examines how property rights affect economic performance once transaction costs and their determinants are taken seriously. Using cross-country panel evidence, it studies outcomes including income, unemployment, credit, and innovation, and shows that the estimated effects of property rights are substantially overstated when transaction costs are omitted. The paper argues that property rights should not be treated as purely exogenous drivers of development, but as institutions whose effects depend crucially on the frictions that shape market exchange.
Economic and Political Studies (2024)
[Article link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20954816.2023.2289235]
Studies the macroeconomic impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Pakistan using the synthetic control method.
Asian Journal of Economics, Business and Accounting (2018)
Examines whether remittance inflows increase households’ use of formal financial services in Pakistan.
[Article link:https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=remittances+and+financial+inclusion+yasir+amin&btnG= ]
Taken together, my research examines how institutions governing property, inheritance, and productive cooperation respond to frictions, shocks, and distributional incentives. A central theme running through my work is that institutions are not fixed constraints, but endogenous responses to problems of commitment, investment, and political conflict. This agenda connects contemporary development challenges to broader processes of institutional adaptation and change.