"Degradation of natural resources has become a global problem that threatens the livelihood of millions of poor people. Many promising technologies for natural resource management are available to address these problems, but farmers and others often fail to adopt them. Why is this? Although many factors can be identified, lack of secure property rights and collective action deserve greater attention from policy makers and technology developers.

This paper gives a general mathematical definition of an institution, and presents an explicit formal method by which to incorporate institutions in a standard general equilibrium model. We illustrate our concept using a modified Prisoner's dilemma game in which property rights over natural resources emerge from an anarchy-like state of nature. Two players decide voluntarily and non-cooperatively whether to give up some fraction of their personal resource to set up an enforcement mechanism that punishes defecting players (i.e., players that do not opt to cooperate).

This paper examines whether better property rights will increase joint productivity of agricultural and timber products in the Brazilian Amazon. Farrell output-based technical efficiency and technological progress measures are derived by using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) for Amazonian counties and are regressed on non-discretional variables such as land title. Land title is found to significantly improve the technical efficiency.

This paper presents econometric evidence of the effects of economic incentives and institutions on national aggregate private agricultural R&D investments. A model is proposed and fitted to annual data for seven European Union countries, 1984-1995. We find strong impacts of both incentives and institutions on private agricultural R&D investment, and including institutional factors strengthens the story and in some cases changes greatly the results. In particular, we reject the hypothesis that quality of property rights does not matter.

Demonstrates the viability of farmers organizations for managing parts of the water resource system to achieve efficient and equitable use of water in a hierarchical society such as Pakistan. Suggests a successful conceptual and methodological framework for taking a bottom-up approach to the formation of water users associations and identifies possible constraints on its wider application.

Resumen Este informe se basó en informaciones cualitativas y cuantitativas obtenidas tanto a nivel nacional como de dos estudios de caso: Los Llanos de la Provincia de La Rioja y Los Valles Calchaquíes de la Provincia de Salta. Aquí también se incorporó a modo comparativo la zona del bolsón de Arauco y Chilecito en la Provincia de La Rioja por su gran importancia actual en el mercado de tierras rurales en esta provincia. En ambos casos se realizaron visitas de campo y entrevistas locales.

This study is a revised version of a working document originally prepared by FAO in April 1995 analysing the policy and legal options available for dealing with the sensitive issue of foreign ownership of land. It provides information on the approaches that are, or have been adopted to regulate foreign ownership of land. As such, it aims at providing a framework for analysis and a representative sample of the legal techniques and strategies that have been devised to deal with the issue; it is not intended to be an authoritative summary of the state of the law in this area.

Resumen En este primer volumen se analizan de manera sistemática algunos de los elementos conformantes del 'Contexto institucional' en que funciona el mercado de tierras en el Perú. En la primera sección presentamos la evolución reciente de la legislación agraria, centrándonos en el impacto de la reforma agraria y los cambios a las limitaciones a los derechos de propiedad y operación del mercado de tierras en las últimas tres décadas. Describimos en mayor detalle el régimen jurídico de tierras vigente actualmente.

Proyecto Opciones de Políticas para el Fomento del Desarrollo de Mercados de Tierras Agrícolas, con el Fin de Facilitar la Transferencia de Tierras a Pequeños Agricultores

Resumen
La Ley de 1996 crea la Comisión Agraria Nacional, la Superintendencia Agraria y la Judicatura Agraria, establece un proceso obligatorio de saneamiento de la propiedad agraria para regularizar los derechos en un plazo de diez años y ratifica el impuesto a la tierra, vigente desde 1986. Utilizando las 1 500 encuestas en 18 zonas distintas de Bolivia orientadas a obtener información para la Superintendencia sobre precios de las tierras, el documento analiza el mercado de tierras.

Proyecto Opciones de Políticas para el Fomento del Desarrollo de Mercados de Tierras Agrícolas, con el Fin de Facilitar la Transferencia de Tierras a Pequeños Agricultores