This paper uses farm panel data from
China to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine
investments, and the demand for machine services. Recently,
China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion
of machine rentals and machine services provided by
specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization
of agricultural production. The empirical results show that
an increase in nonagricultural wage rates leads to expansion

China has used two main spatial policies
to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted
labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration
system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a
96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper
develops a structural new economic geography model to
examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to
available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios

This report is the result of a World
Bank mission that visited Paraguay in June 2013 at the
request of the Government of Paraguay. The mission’s
objective was to identify, quantify, and prioritize
agriculture risks that determine the volatility of
agriculture gross domestic product (GDP), based on a
methodology to assess sector risks developed by the World
Bank. The methodology stipulates a two-phase process. The

This note describes the trends in, and
composition of, absolute poverty based on household
expenditures, and is thus concerned, as a matter of policy
objectives, with access of the population to a particular
minimum standard of living. This should be viewed as
complementary to the companion note on social exclusion
based on Europe 2020 indicators including the relative
at-risk-of-poverty (AROP) rate, focuses on low income in

This report seeks to understand the
successes, challenges and opportunities of Cambodia’s
agricultural transformation over the past decade to derive
lessons and insights on how to maintain future agricultural
growth, and particularly on the government’s role in
facilitating it. It is prepared per the request of the
Supreme National Economic Council and the Ministry of
Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries and is based on the

The last poverty assessment for Rwanda
was conducted in 1997. Three years after the genocide, the
country was characterized by deep and widespread poverty,
rock-bottom health indicators, and pervasive hunger and food
insecurity. In real terms, gross domestic product (GDP) per
capita was lower than it had been in 1960. In real terms,
the economy quadrupled between 1995 and 2013. Enrolment in
primary school is near universal and infant and child

Conventional wisdom holds that
Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite
the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing
agricultural growth in the region is expected to come
largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved
technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and
other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet
following several years of high food prices, concerted

This document presents the Systematic
Country Diagnosis (SCD) for Mali. The SCD was prepared
following a consultative process within and outside the
World Bank. It identifies constraints and opportunities for
achieving the twin goals of ending poverty and improving
shared prosperity by 2030 while acknowledging (i) the need
for selectivity in pro-poor interventions, and (ii) the many
competing ‘binding’ reasons for poverty in Mali. The

This paper provides new empirical
insights on the joint distribution of consumption, income,
and wealth in three of the poorest countries in the world —
Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda — all located in Sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA). The first finding is that while income
inequality is similar to that of the United States (US),
wealth inequality is barely one-third that of the US.
Similarly, while the top of the income distribution (1 and

The need for countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa to build more productive, modern, and market-oriented
farming sectors is one of our most pressing development
challenges. In coming years, African agriculture will have
to increase food production and expand and intensify value
chains in order to meet changing demand on the part of a
rapidly expanding and urbanizing consumer base. The process
of doing this will enable African countries to begin pushing

Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed
down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food

The paper investigates determinants of
civic participation in local budget processes in rural areas
in the Kyrgyz Republic by using data from the Life in
Kyrgyzstan survey, conducted in 2012. The analysis of the
data suggests that although civic awareness and interest in
local budget processes is relatively high, the participation
rate in local budgeting processes is low. The paper also
shows that interest, awareness, and participation are