While liberalizing key factor markets is
a crucial step in the transition from a socialist
control-economy to a market economy, the process can be
stalled by imperfect information, high transaction costs,
and covert resistance from entrenched interests. The authors
study land-market adjustment in the wake of Vietnam's
reforms aiming to establish a free market in land-use rights
following de-collectivization. Inefficiencies in the initial

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

Although increased global demand for
land has led to renewed interest in African land tenure, few
models to address these issues quickly and at the required
scale have been identified or evaluated. The case of
Rwanda's nation-wide and relatively low-cost land
tenure regularization program is thus of great interest.
This paper evaluates the short-term impact (some 2.5 years
after completion) of the pilots undertaken to fine-tune the

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 paper presents a new type of land
market analysis relevant to cities with plural tenure
systems as in West Africa. The methodology hinges on a
systemic analysis of land delivery channels, which helps to
show how land is initially made available for circulation,
how tenure can be formalized incrementally, and the
different means whereby households can access land. The
analysis is applied to the area of Bamako in Mali, where

This paper analyzes land transactions
between municipalities and private businesses based on
official data and business surveys in 15 regions of the
Russian Federation. Since the Russian Federation passed the
new Land Code in 2001, land privatization has been
officially encouraged by the federal government and in
particular, land under previously privatized buildings was
supposed to be privatized to the owner at a nominal price.

When it comes to strategy, the Chinese
have a saying: 'think big, start small, but move
fast.' This has been our guiding philosophy for the
pilot land reforms of the World Bank-Department of
International Development (DFID) sub national Investment
Climate Program (ICP) in Nigeria. The challenge was to find
a 'small' reform entry point from which to
'move fast' on this sensitive and difficult topic,

The Cambodian Land Law (2001) provides
indigenous ethnic minority groups with a right to register
their traditional residential and agricultural lands under
communal title. To date, however, this right has remained
unrealized. While the government has been working on a pilot
registration process in three villages and drafting
implementing regulations under the land law, Cambodia's
once remote highlands have become increasingly exposed to

Rural areas in Cote d'Ivoire
account for 55 percent of the total population. Rural people
rely heavily on export- and food-crop production as their
primary source of livelihood. However, 71 percent of the
rural population live below the poverty line. The government
and the Bank agree that access to land and natural resource
management are critical factors in coping with the rural
crisis. The government invited the Bank to help meet the

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

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

As part of a national experiment, in
2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property
rights reforms, including complete registration of all land
together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate
labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity
design with spatial fixed effects to compare 529 villages
just inside and outside the prefecture’s border. The results
suggest that the reforms increased tenure security, aligned