The report, Land Tenure for Social and
Economic Inclusion in Yemen: Issues and Opportunities was
completed in December 2009. The report addresses the
problems of land ownership in Yemen and the various social
and economic problems associated with the system of land
ownership. Property rights under Yemeni Law are expressed
both in custom and statute, but both are informed by shari a
(Islamic law), which provides the basic property categories

A decade ago in Mozambique, a stakeholder workshop where the need to improve access to industrial and commercial land as a means to encourage investment was a topic of discussion, a government official came up to. In order to create new jobs, generate more income, and modernize the economy, many countries see an urgent need to encourage industrial and commercial investment, both domestic and foreign. However, investment in many sectors cannot take place unless land, along with other basic factors of production, is available.

We examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in Akwapim, Ghana. We show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output.

Although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts, empirical evidence on this phenomenon has been ambiguous at best. Household-level fixed-effect estimates from about 8,500 plots operated by households that own and sharecrop land in the Ethiopian highlands provide support for the hypothesis of Marshallian inefficiency. At the same time, a factor adjustment model suggests that the extent to which rental markets allow households to attain their desired operational holding size is limited.

Recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution, including land reforms. Empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is, however, scant and often contradictory. We use panel household data from India, together with state-level variation in the land reform implementation, to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies.

The authors use evidence from a survey of about 1200 beneficiaries of South African land reform to assess the performance of the initial phase of the land reform program. They find that the program has not lived up to the quantitative goals set, but did successfully target the poor. It has led to a significant number of economically successful projects that already generate sustainable revenues.

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. However, evaluation of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task. Since 2004, a program called "Papel Passado'" has issued titles to more than over 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000. This paper examines the direct impact of securing a property title on child labor force participation. This study uses a comparison between two close and similar communities in the City of Osasco case. The key point of this case is that some units participate in the program and others do not.

While early attempts at land titling in Africa were often unsuccessful, factors such as new legislation, low-cost methods, and increasing demand for land have generated renewed interest. A four-period panel allows use of a pipeline and difference-indifferences approach to assess impacts of land registration in Ethiopia. We find that the program increased tenure security, land-related investment, and rental market participation and yielded benefits significantly above the cost of implementation.

There is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in Africa. This paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low-cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in Ethiopia in the late 1990s.

Commitment failure lies at the core of incomplete contract theory, yet its quantitative significance has rarely been assessed. Using detailed plot-level data from rural Pakistan, we find that non-contractible investment is underprovided on tenanted land, even after controlling for the endogeneity of leasing decisions. Our evidence also indicates that moral hazard in investment effort alone cannot explain this inefficiency.

Recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms. However, little attention has been devoted to the fact that, in the longer-term, the measures used to implement land reforms, especially rental restrictions, could negatively affect productivity.

This paper offers a new theoretical approach to urban squatting, reflecting the view that squatters and formal residents compete for land within a city. The key implication is that squatters "squeeze" the formal market, raising the price paid by formal residents. The squatter organizer ensures that squeezing is not too severe, since otherwise, the formal price will rise to a level that invites eviction by landowners. Because eviction is absent in equilibrium, the model differs from previous analytical frameworks, where eviction occurs with some probability.