Land markets that allow access to
land-and to buildings-through secure property rights, at
transparent prices, and with efficient permitting processes
and land tax systems are essential to a good business
environment. Creating such markets, however, can be a long,
complex, politically charged process, especially where most
land is untitled and where there are conflicting claims. But
experience points to practical interim or step solutions

Successive policies of the Government of
Vietnam for economic reform and modernization have helped
Vietnam to emerge as one of the world's fastest growing
economies. The report provides continued recommendations on
improving land policies to ensure efficiency of their
practical implementation and to target at both economic
development and social sustainability. Policies with regard
to voluntary benefits sharing, promoting the participation

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 policy reforms called for in the
transition from a socialist command economy to a developing
market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a
country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial
focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which
is where one finds the bulk of the population and almost all
the poor. Economic development will typically entail moving
many rural households out of farming into more remunerative

This book examines issues at the
forefront of the debate on land law reform, pays particular
attention to how reform options affect the poor and
disadvantaged, and recommends strategies for alleviating
poverty more effectively through land law reform. It reviews
the role of the World Bank in land law reform, examining
issues of process as well as substance. It also identifies
key challenges and directions, and stresses the need to

To implement the vision of fostering
economic development, social equity, and a transparent and
effective government, the Government of Liberia has outlined
key transitions that need to be accomplished. These include
the development of infrastructure (roads, electricity),
schools, job creation and transition from war, civil
conflict and social polarization to a well functioning
society in which economic opportunities are fostered and

The purpose of this report is to review
and assess Afghanistan's legal framework regulating
social safeguards (national and local laws, regulations,
procedures and policies) with special reference to the law
and practice of compulsory land acquisition, or
expropriation. The overall objective of the report is to
consider how Afghanistan's legal framework would
address social safeguard issues in upcoming World Bank

The scope and urgency of the threats to
Nigeria's rural land are no secret. In 2005, a working
group dedicated to formulating a national agricultural land
policy began the process with a comprehensive articulation
of the challenges facing Nigeria's agricultural land.
The litany included recognition that: 1) agricultural land
use in the country has been unsustainable, resulting in no
fewer than eleven types of extensive land degradation and

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

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

The main objective of the Egypt Public
Land Management Strategy is to provide the Government of
Egypt (GOE) with practical and politically feasible policy
recommendations to reform existing public land management
policies and practices in the aim of improving the business
climate in Egypt. This study is presented in two volumes:
Volume one with the main policy note, supported by Volume
two with background notes on access to public land by

This paper presents such a stocktaking
of land reform and farm restructuring in four countries
(Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and Moldova) that have
had particular difficulties with land reform, farm
restructuring, farm performance, or rural poverty. It is
organized by case studies, each of which is designed to
analyze a central conundrum about land reform and farm
restructuring in an individual country. Much of the