The four chapters in this thesis investigate two distinct phenomena: the rapid spread of peaches in central Bolivia and changes in the time allocation and research productivity of university faculty in the United States. The first chapter studies the interrelations between different types of international migration, technology adoption and human capital investments. Using primary cross-sectional and retrospective panel data collected in the Valle Alto region of Bolivia, I test whether international migration to the United States and Argentina leads to peach adoption, asset accumulation and educational attainment. Households with a U.S. migrant realize increased years of schooling among children and scale back their on-farm activities. Conversely, households with an emigrant in Argentina invest heavily in peach adoption. This chapter is among the first efforts to model the differential returns to two international destinations and is unique in its use of retrospective panel data to analyze a household's investments and accumulation path. In the second chapter, I conduct a spatial analysis of land use change between 2003 and 2008 in the same region. I use remotely-sensed data from two satellite overflight images and develop a new "donut" estimator of the extent of peaches in parcels neighboring a given plot, which decreases the likelihood of same-household parcels being included. Econometric results from spatial lag and discrete choice models show broad consistency of the positive and diminishing effects of peach-growing neighbors on peach adoption. These results suggest that spatially diverse targeting could increase the spread of a new, desirable agricultural technology The third chapter analyzes the evolution of faculty time allocation in agricultural sciences departments between 1979 and 2005, focusing on research versus administrative activities, and shows about a 20% decline in the former and a more than doubling of time spent on the latter. Finally, the fourth chapter measures changes in faculty productivity over this period, uncovering a significant increase in research output per unit time. Combined with the changes in time allocation, these results demonstrate that these productivity gains have compensated for increases in faculty's administrative burden, leading to consistent research output in an era of declining research time.