Various low- and middle-income countries deal with climate change and structural. Structural transformation is the reallocation of resources across the broad sectors of the economy. When income per capita grows, structural transformation is associated with labor moving away from agriculture and into manufacturing and services and with higher urbanization rates. However, a significant share of the labor force remains in subsistence agriculture in rural areas. With rising global temperatures and climate variability, subsistence farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate hazards due to a lack of access to coping mechanisms such as insurance or credit. At the same time, populations surrounding natural resource extraction sites often face economic opportunities but encounter risks from pollution.This dissertation studies the impact of weather shocks on subsistence farming in Nigeria and the community-level effects of industrial mining activity in Peru. The first chapter examines the impact of high temperature on total factor productivity at the farm level in Nigeria by combining nationally representative panel household surveys with satellite weather data. The second chapter studies how farmers adapt input use, crop mix, off-farm labor, and livestock sales in response to extreme heat in Nigerian subsistence farming. The third chapter estimates the impact of industrial mining activity on income, health, and subsistence farming in Peru. It uses a database linking nationally representative household and farm surveys with information on the activity of all industrial mining sites in the country. The findings show that high temperatures adversely impact small-scale farms in Nigeria and industrial mining activity increases the income of low-skilled workers in Peru. Extreme heat decreases agricultural productivity in Nigeria, and farmers attenuate this shock by increasing the area planted and changing crop mix. In Peru, industrial mining activity increases the real income of low-skilled workers. The dissertation provides two implications. First, policy instruments that address adverse shocks to agricultural income need to adapt to the rising frequency and duration of heat waves in Nigeria. Second, implementing policies that facilitate backward linkages in industrial mining can increase real household incomes in the vicinities of industrial mines.

There is a growing consensus that environmental hazards and changing weather patterns disproportionately affect the poor, vulnerable, minority communities. My dissertation studies the nature of risk faced by vulnerable groups of individuals, how these risks affect their labor choice, income, consumption, and migration patterns. In Chapter 1, I study how seniors of different racial and income groups respond to information about hazardous waste sites in their neighborhood and their cleanup process. I find white seniors tend to move out at a higher rate when informed about the presence of a waste site as well as when the site is cleaned up compared to non-white seniors. This suggests that neighborhood gentrification exhibits inertia in the manifestation after the cleanup of Superfund sites. I find an assortative matching of seniors to neighborhoods based on their race and income, reinforcing findings in the environmental justice literature. Chapter 2 documents the effect of drought on labor choices, income, and consumption of rural households in India. I find that household consumption, as well as agricultural jobs, declines in response to drought. Further, I find that these effects are mediated by job skills and land ownership. Specifically, I find that households with working members who have completed primary education account for most of the workers who exit the agricultural sector. In contrast, I find that households with farmland increase their agricultural labor share post-drought. Cultural norms, relative prices, and land market transaction costs provide potential explanations for this behavior. Chapter 3 builds a simple model of household labor allocation based on reduced-form evidence I find in chapter 2. Simulation of the calibrated model implies that projected increases in the frequency of droughts over the next 30 years will have a net effect of a 1\% to 2\% reduction in agricultural labor. While small in percentage terms, this implies that 2.5 to 5 million individuals would leave agriculture. An increase in drought will also increase the size of the manufacturing wage subsidy needed to meet the goals of `Make in India’ policy by 20\%. This is driven by the need to incentivize landowners to reduce farm labor.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that is disproportionately impacting people in developing countries. One coping mechanism that has been observed in response to climate change is migration. This paper attempts to understand the role of climate change as a driver of migration in Papua New Guinea, a complex and under-researched country in Oceania. Past research suggests a complicated story, and that migration in response to climate change is not a simple concept. In order add to the existing literature, a variety of individual, household, and community-level variables are analyzed from a survey of households in rural Papua New Guinea. These variables are analyzed in conjunction with self-reported environmental shocks to determine the impact on migration across time. The results suggest that environmental shocks increase the probability of an individual migrating, with various socioeconomic factors acting as push and pull factors.

As health disparities among Native Americans persist, promoting better health outcomes is of paramount concern among Native populations. A variety of programs exist that try to alleviate problems resulting in higher rates of diet-related chronic diseases and premature death. Indigenous-led nonprofits have implemented a series of nutritional education courses designed to empower community members to make healthier food choices. A theoretically-based curriculum, which provides learners information in the form of sensory-based modules, e.g., food preparation, food handling, cultural awareness, and practical cooking skills, has been introduced in various communities in the Great Plains and Southwest and met with success. We present evidence of success of a series of nutritional education programs, modeled after a canonical educational learning model Bloom’s Taxonomy, whereby families received information and resources necessary to make healthier food across three tiers. As each successive module of the program challenges higher cognitive domains, participants are more likely to indicate satisfaction in the course material as well as a desired change in their behavior, which we attribute to synthesizing and evaluating information to fully master program concepts. Aspects of this programming framework have the potential to be adapted to and integrated into other Native communities striving for the successful adoption of healthier diets.

This paper looks at factors that drive economic growth and show the correlation between economic growth and economic development and how important economic growth is for a developing country because when there is economic growth then the country has potential to develop. This paper continues to explain why there is economic growth in some countries and not in others with specifically focusing on the effects of having a blessed resource endowment. Having an abundance of resources should be a comparative advantage, however as seen in Latin America, South East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa that this surprisingly does not lead to high levels of economic growth. This phenomenon is referred to as the Resource Curse and can be fully explained through assumptions derived from the macroeconomic Heckscher-Ohlin model as well as recent trends in emerging economies. Leading to the conclusion that developing countries abundant in resources are very susceptible to the Resource Curse through the increase inequality that ultimately stunts development. Literature suggests that one of the only solutions to overcoming the Resource Curse is the strengthening the effectiveness of the policies in place, which is a subsequent effect of having quality institutions.

Focusing on how to improve institutions there needs to be consideration of the fact that institutions have rent seeking behaviors because both local governments and foreign investors want to acquire a greater share of the production and the benefits. In attempt to find some solution of how countries can overcome the Resource Curse without having to totally reconstruct the political system the goal should be to be to focus on actions from the private sector. The private sector tends to magnify rent seeking behavior and to solidify any solution I performed interviews from industry leaders who have been working in economic development for the past decades. The purpose was to understand what companies are doing now to ensure sustainable development and how that has changed over the past decades.

In the end, the private industry is focusing on regulations that standardize polices for companies pursuing foreign direct investment requiring them to also focus on local economic growth and development. This requires foreign investors to understand the local culture, environment, and institutions leading to overall better choices for long term profitably, thus fulfilling their rent seeking tendencies. One of the biggest proven solutions is the Social License to Operate which is essentially an agreement created by the private investor that requires the local community to be informed and holds the investor accountable. In the end, if the private sector can positively impact a community whilst maintaining their own agenda then a country can overcome the Resource Curse.