Regulating the price of existing technologies can spur their adoption yet deter subsequent innovation. In India, price controls on genetically engineered (GE) cotton seeds induced this trade-off. Leveraging the policy's differential timing across states, we show that mandated price reductions accelerated adoption of GE seeds by farmers. Although seed supply kept pace, innovation subsequently stalled: fewer new varieties were introduced. Using newly assembled data from experimental field trials across India, we show that agronomic yields of new varieties fell in price-controlled states. To quantify the welfare implications of price and yield effects, we develop and estimate a structural model of demand and supply for seeds with endogenous product attributes. While the policy raised farmers' surplus, especially among the poor, ignoring innovation responses in equilibrium vastly overstates their welfare gains. We use the estimated model to assess alternative policies that better balance adoption and innovation incentives. For a given public budget, incentives for seed developers tied to the productivity of new varieties achieve the highest welfare for farmers.
Supported by the Center for Economic History and the EconLab at Northwestern University, an International Research Travel Grant from the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, and a Graduate Research Grant from the Graduate School at Northwestern University.
Many technologies raise productivity in locations constrained by their natural endowments yet diminish specialization across space. We show that the first commercial nitrogen fertilizers in history were one such "converging" technology. Leveraging natural variation in soil nitrogen deficiency and the sudden introduction of Peruvian guano and nitrates to 19th-century England, we provide two main empirical findings. First, locations specialized on the basis of their natural endowments before the introduction of fertilizer: nitrogen-deficient places devoted less land to nitrogen-intensive crops. Second, combining newly-digitized data and a difference-in-differences design, we show that these nitrogen-deficient places substantially reallocated toward nitrogen-intensive crops after fertilizer was introduced, indicating convergence across space. To quantify the welfare impact of this "converging" technology, we embed fertilizer into a quantitative spatial model of the English agricultural sector with realistic geography. The welfare gains from fertilizer were equivalent to two decades of annual productivity growth in agriculture. However, convergence implies a reduction in the gains from trade, which offsets up to 10% of these welfare gains under plausible trade cost regimes.
We study the optimal design of agricultural input subsidies using an experiment in Mozambique that cross-randomized subsidy rates for small and for large input quantities. Increased subsidy rates for small quantities increase payouts to poorer farmers, but divert farmers from large input quantities. While they do not reach poorer farmers, increased subsidy rates for large quantities increase agricultural production by 36% by increasing input use by more marginally productive farmers. Both informational and financial constraints cause high marginal returns to inputs. We derive and estimate sufficient statistics to quantify how planner preferences over productivity, transfers, and equity shape optimal agricultural input subsidies.
Maximum Wages and Organizational Performance: Evidence from the Liberian Public Sector (with [Erika Deserranno](https://sites.google.com/site/erikadeserranno/home), [Jennifer Ljungqvist](https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/ljungqvist.jennifer), [Vincent Pons](https://www.vincentpons.org/), and [Daniel Rogger](https://danrogger.com/))
publications
2025
Brigandage and the Political Legacy of Monarchical Legitimacy in Southern Italy
Matteo Ruzzante, and Cristoforo Pizzimenti
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2025
Political legitimacy plays a pivotal role in securing the effectiveness and longevity of a governing system, yet it can be eroded by the way rulers handle popular uprisings. This paper studies whether a historical shock in the legitimacy of monarchic rule can have long-term, intergenerational consequences on political attitudes. The unification of Italy ignited a violent reaction against the new ruler in its southern provinces known as the "Great Brigandage". We use fixed effects regressions with a wide set of controls and an instrumental variable approach based on military suitability of the terrain in order to show that, ceteris paribus, municipalities exposed to brigandage in the 1861-1870 period had lower turnout in the 1946 Institutional Referendum and were significantly less likely to vote for the survival of the monarchy. Heterogeneity analysis leveraging a spatial discontinuity in martial law suggests that anti-monarchic sentiment likely stemmed from the collective memory of brigandage repression. We interpret our findings as evidence that latent preferences toward political systems are endogenously shaped by historical events and can be brought to the surface by changes in the institutional environment.
@article{ruzzante2025brigandage,title={Brigandage and the Political Legacy of Monarchical Legitimacy in Southern Italy},author={Ruzzante, Matteo and Pizzimenti, Cristoforo},journal={Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization},volume={235},pages={107000},year={2025},publisher={Elsevier},doi={10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107000},}
2024
Teacher-Led Innovations to Improve Education Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Brazil
We provide experimental evidence from an education program in Brazil that empowers public school teachers, through a combination of technical assistance and earmarked funding, to design and introduce locally adapted pedagogical innovations. While the study encompasses grades 5, 6, and 10, we find consistent and pronounced impacts on learning and school progression in 6th grade, a critical transition year from primary to lower-secondary education. Positive effects are concentrated in schools where teachers are most affected and where the rate of in-school project implementation was highest. We argue that program components are likely complementary and that education projects designed to tackle multiple constraints simultaneously can improve service delivery and child outcomes.
@article{piza2024teacher,title={Teacher-Led Innovations to Improve Education Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Brazil},author={Piza, Caio and Zwager, Astrid and Ruzzante, Matteo and Dantas, Rafael and Loureiro, Andre},journal={Journal of Public Economics},volume={234},pages={105123},year={2024},publisher={Elsevier},doi={j.jpubeco.2024.105123},}
2022
Do Private Consultants Promote Savings and Investments in Rural Mozambique?
Advice from management professionals can help small‐ and medium‐sized firms reach complex financial goals in low‐ and middle‐income countries. We apply lessons learned in the firm literature to determine the degree in which farmer associations face constraints to management and planning capacity that can be alleviated by the provision of advice from external consultants. In particular, we conducted a randomized control trial in 42 water user associations (WUAs) in Mozambique to examine whether more intensive attention from financial consultants through repeated follow‐up visits prompts households to save and invest in agricultural equipment. All WUAs received a financial literacy training and were eligible to receive a matching grant. Twenty‐one WUAs were randomized into the treatment group that additionally were visited by private consultants quarterly, who tailored their advice to meet individuals’ own savings and investment objectives. We find the follow‐up visits increase ‘hidden savings’ in the form of new capital investments on farmers’ own account. Thus, the visits may have changed savings’ habits by leading farmers to invest in technologies that were not directly subsidized. Our ability to detect an additional effect on the type of investments farmers targeted through the matching grant and, hence, the savings for the respective investments is limited given the power of our study design. Although the proportion of households saving increased, the intervention was likely less cost‐effective than other modalities aimed to enhance the proclivity to save.
@article{christian2022private,title={Do Private Consultants Promote Savings and Investments in Rural Mozambique?},author={Christian, Paul and Glover, Steven and Kondylis, Florence and Mueller, Valerie and Ruzzante, Matteo and Zwager, Astrid},journal={Agricultural Economics},volume={53},number={1},pages={22--36},year={2022},publisher={Wiley Online Library},doi={10.1111/agec.12672},}
2020
Psychological Factors Influencing Pro-environmental Behavior in Developing Countries: Evidence from Colombian and Nicaraguan Students
Manuel Francisco Díaz , Andrés Charry , Stefania Sellitti , Matteo Ruzzante, Karen Enciso , and Stefan Burkart
Identifying the determinants of human behavior is useful to adjust interventions and lead the civil society toward a stronger commitment to climate change (CC) mitigation and adaptation objectives, achieving greater support for successfully implementing environmental policies. Existing research has largely focused on case studies of pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) in developed economies but there is very little evidence for developing countries. This study provides estimations of the effect of internal factors, such as sociodemographic variables, and four psychological dimensions (CC knowledge, environmental attitudes, self-efficacy, and trust in sources of environmental information) on PEBs. Data were obtained through a survey applied with future decision makers – university students – from Colombia (n = 4,769) and Nicaragua (n = 2,354). Indices were generated for PEBs and the psychological dimensions using z-scores and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Partial correlations were evaluated through the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method. Our results suggest that, in order to reach the planned emission reduction targets, policy approaches should more strongly focus on educating and motivating citizens and prepare them for contributing to the environmental cause, as well as provide individual solutions to combat CC, rather than providing only information on its causes and consequences.
@article{diaz2020psychological,title={Psychological Factors Influencing Pro-environmental Behavior in Developing Countries: Evidence from Colombian and Nicaraguan Students},author={D{\'i}az, Manuel Francisco and Charry, Andr{\'e}s and Sellitti, Stefania and Ruzzante, Matteo and Enciso, Karen and Burkart, Stefan},journal={Frontiers in Psychology},volume={11},pages={580730},year={2020},publisher={Frontiers Media SA},doi={10.3389/fpsyg.2020.580730},}
policy briefs and reports
**São Paulo Development and Access to Markets Project** (with [Isabela Furtado](https://blogs.worldbank.org/team/isabela-furtado), [Caio Piza](https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/c/caio-piza), and [Astrid Zwager](https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/a/astrid-zwager))
**Perceptions on Climate Change in Colombia and Nicaragua: Evidence from Higher Education Students** (with Stefan Burkart, Manuel F. Díaz, Karen Enciso, and Stefania Sellitti)
