This paper compares and contrasts the
performance of rural and urban manufacturing firms in
Ethiopia to assess the impact of market integration and the
investment climate on firm performance. Rural firms are
shown to operate in isolated markets, have poor access to
infrastructure and a substantial degree of market power,
whereas urban firms operate in better integrated and more
competitive markets, where they have much better access to

This paper uses two recently completed
surveys of individual entrepreneurs (farmers and
microentrepreneurs) and registered enterprises (agricultural
and nonagricultural) operating in Mexico s rural sector to
provide new evidence about the factors influencing the
incidence of credit constraints and investment behavior. To
measure the incidence of credit constraints, the authors use
self-reported information on whether economic agents have a

Food policy often depends on markets and
markets depend on institutions. But how good do institutions
have to be before reforms can be launched? Relying on well
timed surveys of agricultural prices and a joint study by
the Government of Bulgaria and the World Bank on
agricultural market institutions, this paper presents
evidence that performance in food markets improved following
significant policy reforms in Bulgaria, although public

An appropriate rural investment climate (RIC) is essential for rural businesses to be successful and generate employment and income in their communities. Improving the investment climate could facilitate income-generation activities in both farm and nonfarm sectors, thus reducing rural poverty. Nonfarm sector focused growth, combined with agricultural growth, and has been shown by Delgado et al. (1998) to have a significant impact on the local economy through the generation of employment and income.

Moldova has suffered over the last two decades from rising poverty, territorial secession, armed conflict, and the spillover effects of a regional financial crisis, with declining population size and life expectancy, and an economy approximately one-half of what it was in 1990.

Carbon finance recognizes the contribution of projects to mitigating climate change. To be able to access carbon finance, projects can certify their emission reductions under a variety of standards, one of which is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Project developers can sell their carbon credits either in the voluntary or the regulated market.

Tanzania's land, local government and forest laws mean that rural communities have well defined rights to own, manage and benefit from forest and woodland resources within their local areas through the establishment of village forests. This approach, known by practitioners as Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) results in the legal establishment of village land forest reserves, community forest reserves or private forests. By 2008, 1,460 villages on mainland Tanzania1 were involved in establishing or managing village forests covering a total of over 2.345 million hectares.

The implementation of effective Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes in countries emerging from violent conflict are essential for building and maintaining peace and security. In many instances the disarmament and demobilisation of former combatants was achieved, but reintegration remained a challenge, due to the long-term focus and the substantial resources that are required for such a process to be successful.

This paper provides new evidence on the caste-related land productivity differential and its explanations in rural Nepal using household plot panel data. Low-caste households are found to have significantly higher land productivity on their owner-operated plots as compared to high-caste households. A comparison between the rented in land of low-caste and the owneroperated land of high-caste households showed that the former has significantly higher land productivity. No significant Marshallian inefficiency was found in the case of low-caste tenant households.

Reforestation measures for degraded lands, strategies for the sustainable management of forest resources, and agroforestry practices that incorporate trees into farming systems are increasingly demonstrating their promise for producing commercialized tree products. Although the level of investment so far has remained modest, the challenge is to find ways to scale up promising investments in a way that will have a clear impact at the landscape level.

This note examines how to maximize the benefits from the use of market instruments in support of developing countries' low-emission development priorities. First, it briefly surveys the current state and trends of the carbon market, highlighting the main achievements of carbon finance over its decade-long history. Second, it reviews updated scenarios of the scale of future carbon markets and associated financial flows, in light of developments in climate negotiations and domestic markets.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the challenges and the practical successes that a selected number of countries are experiencing in moving towards 'climate-smart' agriculture while also meeting the food requirements of a growing population, broader economic development and green growth objectives. It complements papers prepared in 2010 on technologies and policy instruments, research, and farmers' perspectives.