This paper assesses the relation between
access to markets and cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Making use of a geo-referenced panel over three decades
(1970-2005) during which the road network was significantly
improved, the analysis finds a modest but significant
positive association between increased market accessibility
and local cropland expansion. It also finds that cropland
expansion, in turn, is associated with a small but

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

Despite strong beliefs that property
titling and registration will enhance credit access,
empirical evidence in support of such effects remains scant.
The gradual roll-out of computerization of land registry
systems across Andhra Pradesh's 387 sub-registry
offices allows us to combine quarterly administrative data
on credit disbursed by all commercial banks for an
eleven-year period (1997-2007) aggregated to the

This paper assesses the effects of property titling on households’ access to and use of credit by focusing on household responses to an exogenous change in their formal ownership status. We isolate the credit effect on legal ownership by comparing households from communities in Osasco, Brazil. Our statistical estimates suggest that land titling increases credit use, decreases reliance on credit borrowed from relatives, and increases credit borrowed from commercial banks.

The project initially focused on
building upon the 1998 Registration Law to develop
registration procedures, and on getting the Legislative
Reform Office (LROs) up and running. Cost, affordability,
and quality of services were important considerations. The
Project benefited from the country's high education
levels and relatively low labor costs. Since independence in
1991, the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic has sought to

The authors develop a model of land
leasing with agents characterized by unobserved
heterogeneity in ability and presence of an off-farm labor
market. In this case, decentralized land rental may
contribute to equity and efficiency goals and may have
several advantages over administrative reallocation. The
extent to which this is true empirically is explored using
data from three of China's poorest provinces. The

An extensive review of literature on the
determinants of adoption and impacts of land management
technologies in the Ethiopian highlands was undertaken to
guide policy makers and development agencies in crafting
programs and policies that can better and more effectively
address land degradation in Ethiopia. Several
generalizations emerge from the review: 1) the profitability
of land management technologies is a very important factor

While there is a large, though
inconclusive, literature on the impact of land titles in
Africa, little attention has been devoted to the study of
land conflict, despite evidence on increasing incidence of
such conflicts. The authors use data from Uganda to explore
who is affected by land conflicts, whether recent legal
changes have helped to reduce their incidence, and to assess
their impact on productivity. Results indicate that

Secure property rights are considered a
key determinant of economic development. However, evaluation
of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task.
Since 2004, the Brazilian government, through a program
called "Papel Passado," has issued titles to more
than 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000.
Another topic in public policy that is crucial for
developing economies is child labor force participation. In

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

This paper provides a brief overview of
the intersection of state and customary laws governing land
in peri-urban settlements around Honiara, focusing on their
impact upon landowners, particularly women landowners. It
suggests that the intersection of customary and state legal
systems allows a small number of individuals, predominantly
men, to solidify their control over customary land. This has
occurred to the detriment of many landowners, who have often

The report is addressed to two
audiences: the World Bank team and the decision makers and
technical experts at the city administration who define the
future of land and asset management in Warsaw. The report
starts (section two) from reviewing municipal property
holdings and associated institutional arrangements. This
section focuses primarily on land and financial aspects of
asset management, due to the overall orientation of the