This article examines the importance of landholdings in explaining income inequality among family farms in four districts in Georgia following the land reform of the 1990s. Income inequality is decomposed by sources of income and by determinants of income. The results indicate that farm income is a disequalizing source of income among family farms in these districts. In addition, a uniform increase in landholding is expected to reduce income inequality. Combining the two results, we conclude that the impact of land reform on farm household income inequality depends on the resulting distribution of landholdings. It can reduce inequality if land is distributed relatively equally, but inequality can increase if the wealthier farmers are able to gain control of more (and perhaps better) land resources. A possible implication of this result is that for land reform to be equalizing, distributing land to smallholders should be accompanied by additional policies and regulations supporting small farmers, such as land titling and registration, support for cooperation, and access to credit and other market services.

We propose a model that simulates climate change impacts on crop production and food prices under partial equilibrium. Our model incorporates a system of Laspeyres price and quantity indices that link structurally estimated community-level produce supply functions to market level demand functions. The supply estimation accounts for corner solutions associated with disaggregate land use observations and is constrained to reproduce aggregate supply data. We use the model to assess climate change impacts in Israel, which protects local agriculture by import tariffs and quotas. The simulation results vary greatly when we allow prices to change as a response to supply changes, highlighting the importance of endogenizing prices in climate change simulations. The results imply that climate changes projected for Israel are expected to be beneficial to farmers, particularly due to the positive impact of the forecasted large temperature rise on field crop production. Fruit outputs are projected to decline, and reduce consumer surplus, but to a lower extent than the increase in total agricultural profits. Nearly 20% of the profit rise is attributed to farmers’ adaptation through land reallocation. Adaptation to the projected reduction in precipitation by increasing irrigation is found to be warranted from the farmers’ perspective; however, it is not beneficial to society as a whole. Abolishing import tariffs effectively transfers surpluses from producers to consumers, but the impact of this policy on social welfare is relatively modest.We propose a model that simulates climate change impacts on crop production and food prices under partial equilibrium. Our model incorporates a system of Laspeyres price and quantity indices that link structurally estimated community-level produce supply functions to market level demand functions. The supply estimation accounts for corner solutions associated with disaggregate land use observations and is constrained to reproduce aggregate supply data. We use the model to assess climate change impacts in Israel, which protects local agriculture by import tariffs and quotas. The simulation results vary greatly when we allow prices to change as a response to supply changes, highlighting the importance of endogenizing prices in climate change simulations. The results imply that climate changes projected for Israel are expected to be beneficial to farmers, particularly due to the positive impact of the forecasted large temperature rise on field crop production. Fruit outputs are projected to decline, and reduce consumer surplus, but to a lower extent than the increase in total agricultural profits. Nearly 20% of the profit rise is attributed to farmers’ adaptation through land reallocation. Adaptation to the projected reduction in precipitation by increasing irrigation is found to be warranted from the farmers’ perspective; however, it is not beneficial to society as a whole. Abolishing import tariffs effectively transfers surpluses from producers to consumers, but the impact of this policy on social welfare is relatively modest.

Can resource windfalls reduce corruption? We find that, in democratic regimes with unlimited reelection, the answer is in the affirmative, contrasting a widely held view. The reason is that resource windfalls increase future graft prospects, motivating opportunistic incumbents to postpone their planned embezzlement, which in turn requires them to seek reelection and behave well in order to increase the reelection chances. Term limits mitigate, and may even reverse, this effect by inducing opportunistic incumbents that otherwise would seek reelection to step down. We test the model’s predictions using a panel of U.S. states over the period 1976–2007. Our identification strategy rests on constitutionally-entrenched differences in gubernatorial term limits, and geographically-based cross-state differences in natural resource endowments. Our baseline estimates point at a sizeable impact. We find that a one standard deviation increase in resource windfalls decreases the average corruption level in states with no term limits by 20%, but increases average corruption in states with term limits by 10%. These results suggest that the nature of political institutions is important for understanding the nexus between resource windfalls and corruption.