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Marup Hossain Publications

Discussion Paper
Abstract

Economic development is often conceived as structural transformation and migration out of rural agriculture (Lewis, 1954; Fei & Ranis, 1964). Understanding development therefore requires us to identify how rural economies transform in response to emigration. We study how international migration reshapes domestic economic activity in origin households using a randomized visa lottery that gave Bangladeshi men job opportunities in Malaysia. Winning the lottery raises total household income through remittances, but income earned in Bangladesh declines due to contractions in nonfarm business activity. In contrast, crop income remains stable despite large reductions in agricultural input expenditures, because farming gets delegated through land rental markets. We identify a “supervision constraint” that explains why households divest from nonfarm business activity. The key input that is lost through male migration is not land, labor, or physical capital, but “management capacity”.