Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions.

Vietnam's rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction in the last two decades benefitted from the policy and legal reforms embodied in the Land Laws of 1987, 1993 and 2003 and subsequent related legal acts. This note outlines reforms related to four main themes. The first relates to the needed reform for agriculture land use to create opportunity to enhance effectiveness of land use as well as to secure farmers' rights in land use. Prolonging the duration of agricultural land tenure would give land users greater incentives to invest and care for the land.

An appropriate rural investment climate (RIC) is essential for rural businesses to be successful and generate employment and income in their communities. Improving the investment climate could facilitate income-generation activities in both farm and nonfarm sectors, thus reducing rural poverty. Nonfarm sector focused growth, combined with agricultural growth, and has been shown by Delgado et al. (1998) to have a significant impact on the local economy through the generation of employment and income.

Uganda has started its journey into urbanization and economic development. The pace of urbanization is picking up currently at 4.5 percent per year, and likely to accelerate with rising incomes. The economic benefits from urban growth will come from exploiting economies of scale and agglomeration and by increasing fluidity in factor markets that enable substitution between land and non land inputs.

The tsunami that originated from the Indian Ocean in 2004 wreaked massive destruction, killing more than 130,000 people and displacing half a million individuals in Aceh, Indonesia. More than 800 kilometers of coastline was affected, and close to 53,795 land parcels were destroyed. The land administration system sustained significant damage because documentation of land ownership was washed away along with people's houses and other possessions in the affected communities. Physical boundary markers, including trees and fences, also disappeared.

The study focuses on themes and areas that have been identified as highly relevant for the modernization and commercialization of the agriculture sector. The study originally aimed to review: agricultural marketing, processing and exports; food safety; agricultural “cooperation,” including farmers’ groups; agricultural extension and agricultural insurance.

This paper tracks the process through which FIAS, the investment climate advisory service of the World Bank Group advised the government of Latvia from 1998 to 2004 on ways to improve the business environment, achieve higher rates of economic growth, and thereby alleviate poverty. This case study shows that it is reasonable to describe how assistance by FIAS led to an improved business environment.

Recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution, including land reforms. Empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is, however, scant and often contradictory. This paper uses panel household data from India, together with state-level variation in the implementation of land reform, to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies.

Although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts, the empirical evidence on this phenomenon has been ambiguous at best. Household-level fixed-effect estimates from about 8,500 plots operated by households that own and sharecrop land in the Ethiopian highlands provide support for the hypothesis of Marshallian inefficiency. At the same time, a factor adjustment model suggests that the extent to which rental markets allow households to attain their desired operational holding size is extremely limited.

This is a working paper. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overall framework for the critical assessment of alternative approaches to improving access to land by the rural poor in India , as part of a broader strategy for reducing poverty through rural growth. Viewing persistent constraints on access to land in their historical context, the paper considers India’s record in implementing land reforms, and identifies the elements of a new, complementary approach to improving access to land by the rural poor.

Esta publicação apresenta os resultados da pesquisa Observatório do Uso do Solo e da Gestão Fundiária do Centro de São Paulo, realizada pelo Laboratório de Habitação e Assentamentos Humanos LABHAB da Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo, com o apoio do Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, entre os meses de setembro de 2005 e junho de 2006. O escopo desta pesquisa foi o levantamento e avaliação dos instrumentos urbanísticos e tributários instituídos ou implementados nos últimos 15 anos na área central de São Paulo.

Esta tese discute a operação urbana consorciada como instrumento de parceria entre o poder público e o setor privado para a promoção de projetos urbanos. O trabalho parte da hipótese de que a viabilização de intervenções urbanísticas por meio do instrumento estaria limitada   aplicação parcial da legislação e não   consecução de parcerias efetivas. Em 2001, a regulamentação nacional da operação urbana consorciada pelo Estatuto da Cidade trouxe inovações importantes no sentido de recuperar a essência do instrumento que aparentemente não foram assimiladas de forma equivalente.