Over the coming decades, land policy and
administration, for urban as well as rural areas, will be
critical for Ethiopia's development. The vast majority
of people making up the Federal Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia's (FDRE) predominantly agricultural economy
live in rural areas. Finally, land policies and
administration can contribute significantly to the
objectives of promoting gender equality and protecting

The rural economy in Bangladesh has been
a powerful source of economic growth and has substantially
reduced poverty, especially since 2000, but the remarkable
transformation and unprecedented dynamism in rural
Bangladesh are an underexplored, underappreciated, and
largely untold story. The analysis identifies the key
changes occurring in the rural economy, the principal
drivers of rural incomes, the implications for policy, and

This report is a synthesis of information gleaned from four case studies of World Bank-financed land programs in Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Ghana, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The case studies were designed to both broaden and deepen our understanding of how land policies affect women and men, with an aim to applying this knowledge in very practical ways to World Ban-supported land projects.

Brazil has developed a community-led,
market-based approach to land reform in which poor rural
laborers and farmers, either landless or with insufficient
land for subsistence, form beneficiary associations through
which to obtain financing to buy agricultural properties,
for which they negotiate directly with willing sellers. The
financing package includes complementary funds for
investments to enhance land productivity (water,

The report, Land Tenure for Social and
Economic Inclusion in Yemen: Issues and Opportunities was
completed in December 2009. The report addresses the
problems of land ownership in Yemen and the various social
and economic problems associated with the system of land
ownership. Property rights under Yemeni Law are expressed
both in custom and statute, but both are informed by shari a
(Islamic law), which provides the basic property categories

This study aims to assess the extent to
which reforms have actually been implemented, the impact
they have had on the rural population, and the challenges
which, as a consequence, need to be addressed by the new
administration. This report is organized as follows: Section
1 describes Mexico's rural economy. It reviews the
broad context of macro, trade, and sector-level reforms, the
strengths and weaknesses of both the productive and

Empirical evidence indicates that in
many developing regions, the extreme poor in more marginal
land areas form a "residual" pool of rural labor.
Structural transformation in such developing economies
depends crucially on labor and land use decisions of these
most-vulnerable populations located on abundant but marginal
agricultural land. Although the modern sector may be the
source of dynamic growth through learning-by-doing and

This is the second part of land studies
on Northern Uganda designed to inform the Peace, Recovery
and Development Plan (PRDP). This second part of the study,
undertaken during the second half of 2007 in the Lango and
Acholi regions, builds on the first phase conducted in 2006
in the Teso region. This second study has been designed to
present a more quantitative analysis of trends on disputes
and claims on land before displacement, during displacement

The authors review the role of land
policies in the evolving farm structure of transition
countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). They show how
different policies for land property rights, degrees of
control of land rental and sale markets, and procedures for
restructuring former collective or state farms resulted in
significantly different farm structures in CEE countries

Agriculture has made major contributions
to China's economic growth and poverty reduction, but
the literature has rarely focused on the institutional
factors that might underpin such structural transformation
and productivity. This paper aims to fill that gap. Drawing
on an 8-year panel of 1,200 households in six key provinces,
it explores the impact of government land reallocations and
formal land-use certificates on agricultural productivity

Weather risk and incomplete insurance
markets are significant contributors to poverty for rural
households in developing countries. Weather index insurance
has emerged as a possible tool for overcoming these
challenges. This paper provides evidence on the impact of
weather index insurance from a pioneering, large-scale
insurance program in Mexico. The focus of this analysis is
on the ex-post effects of insurance payments. A regression

This paper presents such a stocktaking
of land reform and farm restructuring in four countries
(Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and Moldova) that have
had particular difficulties with land reform, farm
restructuring, farm performance, or rural poverty. It is
organized by case studies, each of which is designed to
analyze a central conundrum about land reform and farm
restructuring in an individual country. Much of the