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

Nepal depends entirely on imports for
meeting its demand for petroleum products, which account for
the largest share in total import volume. Diesel is the main
petroleum product consumed in the country and accounts for
38 percent of the total national CO2 emissions from fuel
consumption. There is a general perception that the country
would economically benefit if part of imported diesel is
substituted with domestically produced jatropha-based

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

This paper disentangles different
aspects of land fragmentation and its impact on the
efficiency of resource use. The paper uses information on
the incidence of crop shocks to assess whether fragmentation
provides benefits in reducing risk and parcel coordinates
and terrain-adjusted travel times between parcels to more
precisely account for the associated costs in 2010/11 data
from Rwanda. While fragmentation increases the time required

Firms normally keep certain inventories,
including raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished
goods, to operate seamlessly and not to miss possible
business opportunities. But inventory is costly, and the
optimal firm inventory differs depending on various economic
conditions, including trade and transport costs. The paper
examines firm inventory behavior in East Africa, in which
transport connectivity, especially to the ports, is

The expansion of international trade has
been essential to development and poverty reduction. Todays
economy is unquestionable global. Trade as a proportion of
global GDP has approximately doubled since 1975. Markets for
goods and services have become increasingly integrated
through a fall in trade barriers, with technology helping
drive trade costs lower. But trade is not an end in itself.
People measure the value of trade by the extent to which it

Within the debate about rural development policy (RDP), there has been increasing call for a stronger territorial focus emphasising the potentials, resources and demands of regions. Investments in territorial capital and regional capacity building have been considered as the two main cornerstones of a place-based approach to rural development (OECD, 2006). On the basis of an analytical literature review, we developed a framework to operationalise a place-based approach of RDP.

Costa Rica stands out for being among the most politically stable, progressive, prosperous, and environmentally conscious nations in the Latin America and the Caribbean region. Its development model has brought important economic, social, and environmental dividends, with sustained growth, upward mobility for a large share of the population, important gains in social indicators, and significant achievements in reforestation and conservation. However, there are a number of development challenges that need to be addressed to maintain the country’s successful development path.

The Africa Competitiveness Report 2015
comes out at a promising time for the continent: for 15
years growth rates have averaged over 5 percent, and rapid
population growth holds the promise of a large emerging
consumer market as well as an unprecedented labor force that
- if leveraged - can provide significant growth
opportunities. Moreover, the expansion of innovative
business models, such as mobile technology services, is

What are the socioeconomic impacts of
resource abundance? Are these effects different at the
national and local levels? How could resource booms benefit
(or harm) local communities? This paper reviews a vast
literature examining these questions, with an emphasis on
empirical works. First, the evidence and theoretical
arguments behind the so-called resource curse, and other
impacts at the country level, are reviewed. This

The devastating civil war in Syria is
arguably one of the major civil conflicts in recent times.
The conflict started with protests in March 2011 and soon
after escalated to a violent internal war with no end in
sight to this date. The conflict has by the end of 2014
caused well in excess of 150,000 fatalities, and 6 million
internally displaced people (UN), and led 3 million refugees
to move out of the country (UNHCR). Beyond the human

Transition countries provide a natural experiment to study the development of land markets. This paper provides survey-evidence of the variation in the development of land markets, identifies a series of patterns, and provides a set of hypotheses to explain these variations in land market development.