My research primarily focuses on the implications of customary tenure systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, including for agricultural investment decisions and political behavior.
Decentralization of Land Governance and Election Behavior in Burkina Faso, Laura Meinzen-Dick [under review]
I study politicians' responses to the decentralization of land governance in Burkina Faso. To what extent are politicians motivated by private rents versus a concern with constituent welfare? I develop a theoretical model and test its implications using municipal elections during the experimental pilot phase of a land governance decentralization reform. I find that additional political parties contest elections in municipalities slated to receive pilot-phase local land offices, although voter turnout is lower than expected and elections do not become meaningfully more competitive. After implementation and documentation of land rights, both parties and voters behave similarly to their control municipality counterparts. By examining heterogeneity in political responses according to different tensions emerging from customary land rights systems, I argue that politicians are not only driven by their own private rents, but also demonstrate a policy-centric focus on constituent welfare. This speaks to a trade-off inherent in decentralization: despite potential efficiency gains and increased accountability to local citizens, more localized government could be more vulnerable to elite capture, so the motivations of those elites are important.
Customary Tenure and Agricultural Investment in Uganda, Laura Meinzen-Dick [revise & resubmit, American Journal of Agricultural Economics]
Customary tenure in Uganda often features land rights being held by different individuals in a community, creating complex incentives for long-term agricultural investment. I introduce a theoretical model of these incentives, exploring farmers' strategic responses to changing land pressures, which may change the social determinants of tenure insecurity. Empirically, I find results consistent with the model in Uganda. As land pressures rise, long-term input use responds more on freehold than on customary parcels. This can be explained by elite incentives for expropriation, which intensify with external demand for land, creating insecurity on customary parcels. This study offers a nuanced conceptualization of the relationship between tenure systems and agricultural investment, incorporating social dynamics (such as elite expropriation) in both theory and empirics.
Material and Informational Constraints to the Adoption of Digital Farm Input Subsidies, Samuel S. Bird, Michael Carter, and Laura Meinzen-Dick
We study the adoption of an electronic voucher subsidy for agricultural inputs by members of farmer organizations in Uganda. We randomly assign farmer organizations to have their members offered a status quo subsidy, a higher subsidy, or no subsidy. Adoption does not increase significantly due to the status quo subsidy but increases substantially due to the high subsidy. For farmers who at baseline did not use the inputs subsidized by the voucher, adoption increases with their farmer organization's leader's experience with the inputs and social similarity to the member. The results are consistent with material and information constraints limiting adoption of the electronic voucher subsidy, particularly for the intended beneficiaries of the subsidy program: farmers with limited experience with improved inputs, for whom a subsidy lowers the cost of learning by doing and may induce sustained technology adoption. While digital payment schemes can lower the costs of delivering payments from governments to people, they do not by themselves eliminate the need to tend to basic economic constraints of liquidity and information.
Making Women's Rights Visible -- And Contested: Salience, Custom, and Backlash in Tenure Reform, Heather Huntington, Laura Meinzen-Dick, and Alexandra Hartmann
Strengthening land rights can improve a range of development outcomes, leading many African governments to formalize customary land rights. However, women are often excluded from newly formalized rights that privilege primary rights holders. We document the impacts of Burkina Faso’s Rural Land Governance (RLG) project on women’s rights to land, using the 50 treatment and matched control communes in the pilot phase of the program. Using surveys conducted at endline, we find that the RLG program statistically significantly reduced women’s perceived rights to land in treated communes. Both men and women are less likely to report women can access land, make land-related decisions, inherit land, or be added to land documents. This social renegotiation of women’s rights also spills over into other domains of women’s empowerment. In formalizing rights, the program crystallized men’s primary claims and opened contestation over women’s rights, demonstrating the unintended gendered consequences of land formalization.
Examining the Distributional Effects of School Quality on Student Outcomes, Colin Lilly and Laura Meinzen-Dick [under review]
Value-added modeling is a popular approach for evaluating school and teacher effectiveness. Previous research focuses primarily on average treatment effects, finding a positive relationship between education quality and student outcomes. We estimate quantile treatment effects of school quality and find heterogeneity in the impact on long-run student outcomes, with worse off students disproportionately benefiting from gains to school quality. These effects differ by sex.
The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics, Nick Huntington-Klein, Claus Portner, and many coauthors [revise & resubmit, Journal of Economic Literature]
Women's Empowerment and Property Rights, Cheryl Doss, Laura Meinzen-Dick, and Ruth Meinzen-Dick
Strengthening Women Smallholders' Resilience to Agricultural Shocks for Enhanced Income Diversification and Empowerment in Uganda, Florence Kyoheirwe Muanguzi, Susan Kavuma, Brenda Boonabaana, Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo, Losira N. Sanya, Nargiza Ludgate and Laura Meinzen-Dick
Fertility and Land Rights in Burkina Faso, Catalina Herrera Almanza, Laura Meinzen-Dick, Nicolas Pazos Navarro, and Maira Emy Reimao
Gender and Tenure Insecurity in a Matrilineal Customary System. Laura Meinzen-Dick and Helder Zavale. Land Use Policy. 2025, 157. (Preprint version)
A descriptive investigation of the impact of statewide distribution policies and consumer vulnerabilities on COVID-19 vaccination in the United States. Kathleen Iacocca, Beth Vallen, Alicia Strandberg, & Laura Meinzen-Dick. Health Care Management Science, 2025.
The Influence of Sociocultural Factors on Women Smallholder Farmers' Empowerment in Uganda. Brenda Boonabaana, Florence Kyoheirwe Muhanguzi, Losira Nasirumbi Sanya, Laura Meinzen-Dick, Susan Kavuma, Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo, Nargiza Ludgate, and Pius Okello. Chapter in Women and Smallholder Farming: Addressing Global Inequities in Agriculture, Carolyn Sachs and Paige Castellanos (eds). Burleigh Dodds Science Publishers, forthcoming.
The Meanings of Resilience in Climate Justice: Women Smallholder Farmers' Responses to Agricultural Shocks in Uganda under the Spotlight. Florence Kyoheirwe Muhanguzi, Brenda Boonabaana, Losira Nasirumbi Sanya, Susan Namirembe Kavuma, Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo, Nargiza Ludgate and Laura Meinzen-Dick. Agenda. 2023.
Replacing Iron-Folic Acid with Multiple Micronutrient Supplements among Pregnant Women: Costs, Impacts, and Cost-Effectiveness. Reina Engle-Stone, Sika M. Kumordzie, Laura Meinzen-Dick, and Steve Vosti. Annals of the New York Academy of Science. 2019 May, 1444(1).
Transitioning from Distribution of Iron-Folic Acid Supplements to Multiple Micronutrient Supplements for Pregnant Women. Reina Engle-Stone, Steve Vosti, Laura Meinzen-Dick, and Sika M. Kumordzie. Current Developments in Nutrition. 2019 3 (Supplement 1).
The Gendered Nature of Land and Property Rights in Post-Reform Rwanda. Kelsey Jones-Casey, Laura Meinzen-Dick, and Alfred Bizoza. USAID LAND Project Report. 2014 May.
Impact Evaluation of the Agriculture Cluster Development Project, World Bank/DIME, Michael Carter (UC Davis ARE), & Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Uganda
Shifting from Iron-Folic Acid to Multiple Micronutrient Supplements: Cost, Benefit, and Cost-Effectiveness Estimates, Steve Vosti (UC Davis ARE) & Reina Engle-Stone (UC Davis Nutrition)
Associations between Market Characteristics and Child Health: Insights from the iLiNS Site in Burkina Faso, Steve Vosti (UC Davis ARE) & Jenni James (Crunch Pack)
The Nexus between Gender, Collective Action for Public Goods, and Agriculture: Evidence from Malawi, Nancy McCarthy (Lead Analytics) & Talip Kilic, World Bank