Economic, agronomic, and biophysical drivers affect global land use, so all three influences need to be considered in evaluating economically optimal allocations of the world’s land resources. A dynamic, forward-looking optimization framework applied over the course of the coming century shows that although some deforestation is optimal in the near term, in the absence of climate change regulation, the desirability of further deforestation is eliminated by mid-century.

Over the past quarter century, Vietnam’s
agricultural sector has made enormous progress. Vietnam’s
performance in terms of agricultural yields, output, and
exports, however, has been more impressive than its gains in
efficiency, farmer welfare, and product quality. Vietnamese
agriculture now sits at a turning point. The agricultural
sector now faces growing domestic competition - from cities,
industry, and services - for labor, land, and water. Rising

We examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in Akwapim, Ghana. We show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output.

The Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
for Montene gro covers the period from July 1, 2015 to June
30, 2020 (fiscal years 2016-2020). This CPF builds on the
results and lessons of the previous World Bank Group (WBG)
Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), which originally covered
the period July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014, and was
subsequently extended to June 30, 2015.The one-year CPS)
extension was intended to provide greater clarity on the

Although opinions on impacts of land market transfers are sharply divided, few studies explore welfare- and productivity-impact of land sales markets over a long time horizon and national scale. A panel spanning almost 20 years, together with an indicator of climatic (rainfall) shocks, allows us to assess factors underlying market-mediated land (sale and purchase) transactions and their impact on productivity and equity. Economic growth emerges as a key driver of such markets although shocks, their effect mitigated by bank presence, also increased market activity.

Although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts, 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 limited.

The extractive industries (EI) sector occupies an outsize space in the economies of many developing countries. Economists, public finance professionals, and policy makers working in such countries are frequently confronted with issues that require an in-depth understanding of the sector. The objective of this volume is to provide a concise overview of EI-related topics these professionals are likely to encounter.

Over the past twenty years, Uganda’s
population density has been increasing rapidly, placing
significant pressure on the use of land. Uganda now has a
population density of 194 persons per square kilometer of
arable land, compared to 80 in Kenya and 116 in Ghana. At
present, the majority of Uganda’s population still lives in
rural areas, where the main source of livelihood is
agriculture. However, the proportion of the population

Sri Lanka is in many respects a
development success story. With economic growth averaging
more than 7 percent a year over the past five years on top
of an average growth of 6 percent the preceding five years,
Sri Lanka has made notable strides towards the goals of
ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity (the
‘twin goals’). The national poverty headcount rate declined
from 22.7 to 6.7 percent between 2002 and 2012/13, while

Recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms. However, little attention has been devoted to the fact that, in the longer-term, the measures used to implement land reforms, especially rental restrictions, could negatively affect productivity.

Azerbaijan’s performance on the twin
goals has been commendable. The middle class has doubled in
size and extreme poverty has almost been eliminated in the
space of a decade. At the same time, regional differences
persist, with significantly higher poverty rates in lagging
regions, and Baku dominating overwhelmingly in terms of
share of GDP. Disparities in welfare also persist between
rural and urban areas as well as across social groups. As

The Africa Competitiveness Report 2015
comes out at a promising time for the continent: for 15
years growth rates have averaged over 5 percent, and rapid
population growth holds the promise of a large emerging
consumer market as well as an unprecedented labor force that
- if leveraged - can provide significant growth
opportunities. Moreover, the expansion of innovative
business models, such as mobile technology services, is