The Annual Bank Conference on
Development Economics (ABCDE) is one of the best-known
conferences for the presentation and discussion of new
knowledge on development. It is an opportunity for many of
the world's finest development thinkers to present
their ideas. The papers in this volume were presented at the
ABCDE that was held on January 16-17, 2007, in Beijing,
China. Each year the topics selected for the conference

Development is a multidimensional
process characterized by economic growth, investment and
technological progress, transformation of natural resources,
demographic change, advances in health and education, and
evolution of social and political institutions. The results
of development should be measurable by increases in output,
improvements in the welfare of people, greater efficiency in
the use of scarce resources, and a balance between human

This study was initiated in 1999 with
the objective of identifying the most promising path to
development in light of emerging global and regional
changes. The purpose of this volume is to examine the role
of universities in enhancing technological capability in
Asian as well as other industrial countries. This volume
also discusses the University-Industry Links (UIL) policies
of national governments, corporations and sub national

This report reviews Community Driven
Development (CDD) projects in Lao People's Democratic
Republic (PDR) to determine their effectiveness in
channeling resources to communities for poverty reduction.
The study examines three CDD projects in depth: the Poverty
Reduction Fund, the Village Investment for the Poor (both
supported by the World Bank), and the Government-financed
Village Development Fund. Through close analysis of these

Last Friday 11 of May was an important day for millions of poor rural people and small scale farmers whose rights of access to natural resources were recognized for the first time ever.

Property assessment for rating purposes has been practiced in Kenya for over a century. Property taxation is a major source of local authority finance though its full potential has not being realized. The revenue received from property taxes is used for provision of services to residents within a local authority’s jurisdiction Lack of realization of full potential of the property tax is blamed on inefficiencies in the local authorities as a result of poor property tax administration.

El resumen informativo: "Land Tenure and REDD+" traducido en Español.
Release Date: Monday, August 1, 2011File:  La Tenencia de Tierras y el REDD+

Ninth in a series of annual reports comparing business
regulations in 183 economies, Doing Business 2012 measures
regulations affecting 11 areas of everyday business activity:

• starting a business
• dealing with construction permits
• employing workers
• registering property
• getting credit
• protecting investors
• paying taxes
• trading across borders
• enforcing contracts
• closing a business
• getting electricity

The article "From Blood Diamonds to Fishponds: Land-Rights Project for Central African Republic Miners Has Ripple Effect" describes the successes of a project led by USAID's Land Tenure Unit.

Well-functioning urban land and housing markets are critical success factors for achieving robust economic growth. This paper provides an overview of urban land and housing market performance in Punjab Province of Pakistan. It describes the characteristics of well-functioning markets and argues that the Punjab's present markets are not performing adequately.

The growing awareness about the need to anticipate the future of land systems focuses on how well we understand the interactions between society and environmental processes within a complexity framework. A major barrier to understanding is insufficient attention given to long (multidecadal) temporal perspectives on complex system behavior that can provide insights through both analog and evolutionary approaches. Analogs are useful in generating typologies of generic system behavior, whereas evolutionary assessments provide insight into site-specific system properties.

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.