This paper investigates how reductions
of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle
school graduates to attend high school in rural China.
Change in the cost of migration is identified using
exogenous variation across counties in the timing of
national identity card distribution, which made it easier
for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in
urban destinations. The analysis first shows that timing of

In this paper, the authors examine the
impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the
consumption of rural households in China. The authors find
that increased migration from rural villages leads to
significant increases in consumption per capita, and that
this effect is stronger for poorer households within
villages. Household income per capita and non-durable
consumption per capita both increase with out-migration, and

This paper tells a story about
conditions in Tanzania's hidden economy, the parts of
the natural resource sector often ignored in conventional
economic analyses and studies, and makes recommendations for
future policy actions. The paper draws primarily from
extensive background studies undertaken of the forestry,
fishery, wildlife, mining, and tourism sub sectors (COWI
2005) as well as a wide range of complementary studies

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

International food prices spiked for the second time in four years in early 2011, igniting concerns about a repeat of the 2008 food price crisis and its consequences for the poor. International food price uncertainty has also increased along with average levels. Although price volatility is an intrinsic characteristic of agricultural markets, it has increased markedly over the last five years, compared to the previous two and a half decades, even when controlling for inflation.

N. B. The title of this article, published in the April-May issue of "The Mon Forum", uses the term "Bill" which implies that the law has not been adopted. Elsewhere in the article, however, it is clear that the analysis is of the adopted Law...

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 limited research on the benefits of women gaining secure rights to land and property suggest positive results: an increase in women’s participation in household decision-making; an increase in net household income; a reduction in domestic violence; an increased ability to prevent being infected by HIV/AIDS; and increased expenditures on food and education for children. Understanding the complexity surrounding women’s land rights is critical to ensuring that those rights are protected and improved.

Property rights to land represent the key institutional asset on which rural people build their livelihoods. In fact, in many countries, landlessness is the best predictor of poverty. The nature of farmers’ property rights to land substantially impacts their willingness and ability to adopt productivity-enhancing inputs and investments.

The developmental impact of institutions to establish and maintain secure property rights to land has been a subject of much debate. The authors review the literature on the impact of land administration interventions in specific contexts, highlighting the dependence of outcomes on the governance environment, the effectiveness of the state apparatus, and the distribution of socio-economic power.

Motivated by the emphasis on secure property rights as a determinant of economic development in recent literature, we use village- and household-level information from about 800 villages throughout China to explore whether legal reform increased protection of land rights against unauthorized reallocation or expropriation with below-average compensation by the state.

Farmland Act
(Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No.ll of 2012)
Day of 8th Waxing of Tagu 1373 ME (30th March, 2012).....The translation has some notable shortcomings...