Although transfer of agricultural land
ownership through land reform had positive impacts on
productivity, investment, and political empowerment in many
cases, institutional arrangements in West Bengal -- which
made tenancy heritable and imposed a prohibition on
subleasing -- imply that early land reform benefits may not
be sustained and gains from this policy remain well below
potential. Data from a listing of 96,000 households in 200

Competing theories increasingly support
the positive role of social capital in small loan default
costs of group lending; at the same time, potential group
collusion may increase loan delinquencies. Findings from the
available literature are mixed on the role of the various
attributes of group lending. But past studies suffer from
estimation bias due to the unobserved sorting behavior of
group members and their other attributes. This paper

This paper reviews dynamic general
equilibrium models in order to collect insights on the
interaction between economic growth and environmental
issues. The authors discuss the Ramsey model and extend it
for natural resource inputs and pollution, as well as for
endogenous technical change. Green growth becomes within
reach if there is good substitution, a clean backstop
technology, a small share of natural resources in gross

This paper reviews the challenges and
opportunities raised by international trade for developing
countries considering a green growth strategy. A key concern
is the effect of environmental policies on international
competitiveness. For production-generated pollution, there
is evidence that stringent environmental policy reduces some
indicators of competitiveness, but the effect is small in
most sectors. However, tightening up environmental standards

Using subnational historical data, this
paper establishes the within country persistence of economic
activity in the New World over the last half millennium. The
paper constructs a data set incorporating measures of
pre-colonial population density, new measures of present
regional per capita income and population, and a
comprehensive set of locational fundamentals. These
fundamentals are shown to have explanatory power: native

Following the cessation of hostilities
in May 2009, the Government of Sri Lanka has announced a
suitably ambitious macroeconomic vision to capitalize on the
peace dividend. Its goals include growing at 8 percent or
more per year and lowering government indebtedness from
around 80 to 60 percent of GDP by 2015. This paper's
main finding is that while some post-conflict bounce is only
to be expected, sustaining high growth presents significant

The objective of the Functional Review
of the Environment, Water and Forestry sector (FR-EWF) is to
help the Government of Romania (GoR) develop an action plan
for implementation over the short- and medium-term to
strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector
administration, and provide input to the Government National
Reform Program (NRP 2011- 2013) and beyond, especially in
relation to those functions that support Romania's

Book chapter

China’s land policy has been in the news frequently over the last few weeks, since the Chinese government announced it will reform its land policy in the wake of the Third Plenum last November.

For those who do not know the Chinese land system follows a brief introduction:

Benin covers a land area of 114,763 square kilometers and occupies a long stretch of land perpendicular to the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa. It is bordered on the north by Burkina Faso and the Republic of Niger, on the east by the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and on the west by the Republic of Togo. With a 124-kilometer coastline, it stretches north to south some 672 kilometers and east to west 324 kilometers at its widest point.

Book chapter

Book chapter