While there are ample empirical studies that claim the potential disincentive effects of sharecropping arrangements, the existing literature is shallow in explaining why share tenancy contracts are prevalent and diffusing in many developing countries. Using a unique tenant-landlord matched dataset from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, we are able to show how the tenants’ strategic response to the varying economic and tenure-security status of the landlords can explain sharecroppers’ productivity differentials.

Internal displacement in Colombia has
become more prevalent and serious. Expulsion of land users
to gain territorial control is increasingly a tactical
element in the conflict. High land inequality makes it
easier to uproot populations. Providing assistance to
displaced populations does not reduce their propensity to
return. Together with other measures, a land policy that
increases tenure security for those at risk of displacement,

Land and real estate reforms have not
been effective at achieving their objectives, in part
because of how they have been designed and implemented. To
be successful, reforms must become comprehensive in design,
argue the authors, although implementation may be phased
over time and take local conditions into account. Reform
must include three elements: 1) Institutional reforms that
better define property rights, reduce information asymmetry,

Evidence is mounting that secure
property rights have positive effects for poor people in
general and women in particular. The aim of this report is
to review what is known about women s access to and control
over land and real property in urban settings, identifying
approaches to strengthening property rights that enhance
women s agency, and sharing key lessons. Section two
synthesizes the evidence on urban women s priorities with

While scholars agree on the importance
of land rental markets for structural transformation in
rural areas, evidence on the extent and nature of their
operation, including potential obstacles to their improved
functioning, remains limited. This study uses
household-level data from six countries to start filling
this gap and derive substantive as well as methodological
lessons. The paper finds that rental markets transfer land

Land markets play a limited role in
subsistence economies with low skill-intensity of
agricultural cultivation, equally distributed land
endowments and little movement out of agriculture to join
the non-farm economy. But, as the economy starts to
diversify, the scope for efficiency-enhancing land transfers
beyond immediate kin and for longer than just one season
assumes significantly greater importance. Lease markets can

Albania's radical farmland
distribution is credited with averting an economic crisis
and social unrest during the transition. But many believe it
led to a holding structure too fragmented to be efficient,
and that public efforts to consolidate plots are needed to
lay the foundation for greater rural productivity. This
paper uses farm-level data from the 2005 Albania Living
Standards Measurement Survey to explore this quantitatively.

The report, Land Tenure for Social and
Economic Inclusion in Yemen: Issues and Opportunities was
completed in December 2009. The report addresses the
problems of land ownership in Yemen and the various social
and economic problems associated with the system of land
ownership. Property rights under Yemeni Law are expressed
both in custom and statute, but both are informed by shari a
(Islamic law), which provides the basic property categories

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

Government entities in India hold large
amounts of public land. Their landholdings include some of
the most valuable property in the country. Parts of this
patrimony lie vacant or underutilized. Public sector bodies
also own large blocs of land that sometimes stand in the way
of efficient completion of urban infrastructure networks. At
the same time, urban India is deficient in basic
infrastructure -- both network infrastructure needed to

This paper presents a new type of land
market analysis relevant to cities with plural tenure
systems as in West Africa. The methodology hinges on a
systemic analysis of land delivery channels, which helps to
show how land is initially made available for circulation,
how tenure can be formalized incrementally, and the
different means whereby households can access land. The
analysis is applied to the area of Bamako in Mali, where

The authors examine the impact of land
reform in Vietnam which gives households the power to
exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their
land-use rights. The authors expect this change to increase
the incentives as well as the ability to undertake long-term
investments on the part of households. Their
difference-in-differences estimation strategy takes
advantage of the variation across provinces in the issuance