Land reform can broadly be divided into
land tenure reform-the establishment of secure and
formalized property rights in land-and land
redistribution-the transfer of land from large to small
farmers. The paper is therefore divided into two chapters.
The first chapter gives a short narrative of some of the key
land tenure and land policy issues. While these issues
remain politically sensitive, there is a solid consensus

A decade ago in Mozambique, a stakeholder workshop where the need to improve access to industrial and commercial land as a means to encourage investment was a topic of discussion, a government official came up to. In order to create new jobs, generate more income, and modernize the economy, many countries see an urgent need to encourage industrial and commercial investment, both domestic and foreign. However, investment in many sectors cannot take place unless land, along with other basic factors of production, is available.

This report summarizes the findings of
the Uganda Sustainable Land Management Public Expenditure
Review (SLM PER). The SLM PER was undertaken to achieve six
main objectives: (i) establish a robust data base on
SLM-related public expenditure that can support credible
empirical analysis; (ii) develop a sound methodology for
conducting SLM PERs, which could guide similar work in the
future; (iii) analyze the level and composition of SLM

This report examines the question of
land titling in Madagascar, a country where modern and
informal tenure systems coexist and overlap to a significant
extent. The report reviews three main arguments for land
titling and their relevance for Madagascar in order to
provide policy implications and evaluations. The first is
that land titling serves as protection against
expropriation. Second, titles may also facilitate land

Despite its rapid growth in recent
decades, GDP per capita in India remains at a relatively low
level by international standards, and the country continues
to be marked by large subnational disparities in levels of
well-being. These large disparities naturally lead to
interest in India’s spatial landscape of potential for
economic development. Against this backdrop, this paper
presents the results of an analysis of underlying variations

Livelihoods, food security, and
development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa are highly
dependent on land management practices to generate natural
ecosystem goods and services. Out of a total population of
about 717 million people, almost 60 percent depend for their
livelihood on agriculture, hunting, fishing, or forestry.
However, unsustainable land management already is leading to
large-scale land degradation trends, which pose a threat to

The authors use data from Ethiopia to
empirically assess determinants of participation in land
rental markets, compare these to those of administrative
land reallocation, and make inferences on the likely impact
of households' expectations regarding future
redistribution. Results indicate that rental markets
outperform administrative reallocation in terms of
efficiency and poverty. Households who have part-time jobs

This report evaluates the legal
framework for rural land rights, the regulations of rural
housing sites, the effects of land requisition on farmers
who lose land, and some selected issues affecting urban land
rights. The focus of this report is how to enhance property
rights in a number of different contexts. The report makes a
series of specific policy recommendations for rural
agricultural land, rural housing land, to protect rights in

Over the last decade, the countries of
the Latin America and the Caribbean region experienced a
deep economic and social transformation which lifted
millions out of poverty and swelled the ranks of the middle
class. Strong economic growth driven by both domestic
reforms and a favorable global economic environment, was
responsible for this progress. Complementary social
programs, made possible by growing fiscal space, helped

Taking advantage of a historical quasi-experiment in Sri Lanka, this paper provides evidence on the effects of land market restrictions on wages and its spatial pattern. The empirical specification is derived from a general equilibrium model that predicts that the adverse effects of land market restrictions on wages will be less in remote locations. For identification, the study exploits the effects of historical malaria prevalence on the incidence of land restrictions through its effects on "crown land".

The authors use a large data set from
Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and
transferability to explore determinants of different types
of land-related investment and its possible impact on
productivity. While they find some support for endogeneity
of investment in trees, this is not the case for terraces.
Transfer rights are unambiguously investment-enhancing. The
large productivity effect of terracing implies that, even

The aim of this discussion paper is to
ascertain the government of Lao's (GoL) current
practices in negotiating, awarding, and managing land
concessions; enhance GoL understanding and commitments to
develop national capacities targeting improved land
management, that will generate revenues for GoL, and ensure
sustainable development as an urgent priority; and provide a
basis for dialogue within the government to enable its