The International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World Bank introduced the Poverty Reduction Strategy
Paper (PRSP) process in 1999 to strengthen the poverty
alleviation focus of their assistance to low-income
countries. This report reviews Tajikistan s experience with
the PRSP process, focusing on the effectiveness of IMF and
World Bank support to the process and the extent to which
the two institutions lending and non-lending activities in

Using household survey data for 1998, the authors assess the distributional impact of the recent economic crisis in the Philippines. The results suggest that the impact of the crisis was modest, leading to a five percent reduction in average living standards, and a nine percent increase in the incidence of poverty - with larger increases indicated for the depth, and severity of poverty. The greater shock came from El Nino, rather than through the labor market. The labor market shock was progressive (reducing inequality) while El Nino shock was regressive (increasing inequality).

The paper situates group ownership within the evolution of the land reform programme. The paper presents a group ownership and operations continuum which ranges from informal occupation of state land and production through to more formally structured and regulated production systems and tenure arrangements. 

Asks are people better off in the new resettlements, a decade after they had moved, compared to the communal areas? To probe this question in more depth, in 2012 Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene and Ian Scoones undertook a survey in some nearby communal areas in parallel with the resurvey of the land reform sites. A complex story emerges in these 5 blogs showing that the resettlements are not simply an extension of the communal lands, but are different on a variety of fronts, with important implications for the future.

Asks how have rural women become important actors in accessing land and shaping non-permanent mobile livelihoods in the context of the fast track land reform programme. Data is based on an ethnographic study at Merrivale farm, Tavaka village, from 2009-12. Shows that women have become major actors in land acquisition and non-permanent mobile livelihoods. Mobility is central in the evolving conflicts in the new resettlement areas. The concept of home becomes central in resolving conflicts and affects how conflict mechanisms are reached both at Merrivale and in South Africa.

Land and real estate reforms have not
been effective at achieving their objectives, in part
because of how they have been designed and implemented. To
be successful, reforms must become comprehensive in design,
argue the authors, although implementation may be phased
over time and take local conditions into account. Reform
must include three elements: 1) Institutional reforms that
better define property rights, reduce information asymmetry,

Women make essential contributions to agriculture in developing countries, where they constitute approximately 43 percent of the agricultural labor force. However, female farmers typically have lower output per unit of land and are much less likely to be active in commercial farming than their male counterparts. These gender differences in land productivity and participation between male and female farmers are due to gender differences in access to inputs, resources, and services. In this paper, we review the evidence on productivity differences and access to resources.

The decollectivization of agriculture in
Vietnam was a crucial step in the country's transition
to a market economy. But the assignment of land use rights
had to be decentralized, and local cadres ostensibly had the
power to corrupt this process. The authors assess the
realized land allocation against explicit counterfactuals,
including the simulated allocation implied by a competitive
market-based privatization. The authors find that 95-99

The objective of this policy note on
land is to assist the Government of Moldova in improving the
effectiveness of land management in agriculture, with a view
to enhancing the sector's contribution to
Moldova's economic growth and poverty reduction
objectives. The note reviews the progress that has been
made to date on land reform in Moldova, and provides
rigorous economic analysis of the impacts of the reforms and

The women Land Rights Project is a project of Kenya Land Alliance that aims at actualisation Women land and property rights, as provided in the Constitution of Kenya, 2013 and as a means towards poverty alleviation. This considering the fact that, in Kenya where the foundation of most communities is Agriculture and livestock production, women contribute up to 80% of workforce yet they only hold 1% of registered land in their names and around 5-6% of registered titles are held in joint names (Kenya Land Alliance, 2013).

This policy note reviewed the status of
farm machinery in the Kyrgyz Republic. Agricultural
productivity, particularly in terms of grain yields, is low
because of underinvestment. This note finds that a
significant deficit in agricultural machinery is hindering
sector productivity. The Kyrgyz Republic has fewer tractors
per hectare than any comparable country, with a deficit
estimated at 40 percent. The deficit of combine harvesters,

The objective of this paper is to
present a succinct and up-to-date review of the urban sector
in Egypt, with a focus on issues for which there is new
insight or emerging government interest. The two main themes
of the report are the challenges facing the urban sector and
the policy implications at various levels of government.
Some of the reports mains findings are: urbanization in
Egypt takes on forms and processes which are not well