Can well-defined access rights to publicly owned land be as effective as privatization in increasing productivity and wealth? In this paper, I evaluate the impact of public property rights using the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, which determined secure access rights for ranchers to newly created, large grazing districts in the Western US. Using satellite-based vegetation data, I exploit spatial discontinuities across grazing district boundaries and find that public lands with well-defined access rights for ranchers are at least 10% more productive than lands without. Immediately after establishing grazing districts, ranchers inside these districts held more cattle, reported higher income and farm values than their counterparts outside. Despite ranchers being unable to invest in publicly-owned lands, these magnitudes are similar to outright privatization. Instead, I argue that secure access rights resolve uncertainty around future usage and align the incentives of ranchers and regulators, thus incentivizing sustainable and profitable usage. I provide two results supporting this hypothesis: Areas with stronger pre-reform state capacity show larger increases in vegetation. Monthly patterns on vegetation are consistent with the adoption of productivity-increasing fallowing practices. I investigate alternative explanations, and find no empirical support for differential initial productivity; negative spillovers; or systematic local manipulation of boundaries.

Does access to education facilitate the emergence of a human capital elite from which social activists, and thus, social change can emerge? Assembling a city-level panel of the political, intellectual, and economic elite throughout German history, we find that the opening of secondary schools for women increased their representation among the human capital elite. Women became recognized for living independently, for becoming authors, and for actively fighting for women's rights, gradually bringing about social change. Several other city-specific indicators of economic and gender-specific cultural change are unrelated to the increasing representation of women among the human capital elite.

How is wealth distributed when the economy grows? I study this question in the context of African countries and ethnic groups. If wealth is distributed proportional to population, larger ethnic groups should benefit more when economic activity increases. Using nighttime light and individual level data to geographically locate wealth, I find the exact opposite: Smaller ethnic groups, particularly those in political power, benefit more from increased economic activity than larger ones. The results indicate that political elites in power redistribute wealth from larger ethnic groups. As a result, people's satisfaction with democracy and trust in institutions reduces, casting a shadow on the implementation of trade liberalization policies in developing countries. Instrumental variables estimating exploiting exogenous variation in trading activity confirm initial results.

All conflict ends, and with it, recovery begins. Yet, different contexts vary greatly in how successfully they recover. This paper provides evidence on the role of local governance in shaping the consequences of post-conflict development efforts. We study post-genocide Cambodia, where landmine clearance promised large economic gains. However, even though clearance was highly successful in reducing victimization and freeing up productive lands in most treated areas, we find highly heterogeneous effects on economic outcomes. Using granular variation, we document large-scale elite capture in areas with weak existing property rights and low historical demands for democratic accountability. In contrast, areas with strong local governance see large positive economic gains, explained by an absence of elite capture. Our evidence suggests that post-conflict development efforts can fail to achieve their potential when not combined with investments into local capacity raising the costs of elite capture.

Free primary education is considered an important public policy to promote poor children's schooling. We explore a nationwide policy experiment in Cambodia in 2000 that abolished primary school fees to assess this claim. The paper investigates the effects of the program by combining differences in fee exposure across province, time, and cohort. One additional year of free education had no impact on children living in households below the consumption poverty line, but increased the likelihood of completing primary school, led to more years of schooling completed, and raised literacy for children in households above the poverty line. To ensure a causal interpretation of the heterogeneous effects, we exploit weather-induced agricultural volatility to estimate the difference across the consumption poverty line. Though poor and non-poor children attended school to same extent after the reform, poor children were less likely to progress and complete the higher grades. The findings are consistent with the idea that poor children and their parents are affected by the local community's educational norm, where income segregation may explain why poor students fail to take advantage of the policy change.