Empirical evidence indicates that in
many developing regions, the extreme poor in more marginal
land areas form a "residual" pool of rural labor.
Structural transformation in such developing economies
depends crucially on labor and land use decisions of these
most-vulnerable populations located on abundant but marginal
agricultural land. Although the modern sector may be the
source of dynamic growth through learning-by-doing and

The authors review the role of land
policies in the evolving farm structure of transition
countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). They show how
different policies for land property rights, degrees of
control of land rental and sale markets, and procedures for
restructuring former collective or state farms resulted in
significantly different farm structures in CEE countries

This paper sheds light on how to harvest
the "youth dividend" in Sub-Saharan Africa by
creating jobs in agriculture. The agriculture that attracts
the youth will have to be profitable, competitive, and
dynamic. These are the same characteristics needed for
agriculture to deliver growth, to improve food security, and
to preserve a fragile natural environment. With higher
priority accorded to implementation of well-designed public

The agricultural and food sector is an
ideal case for investigating the political economy of public
policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector
since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational, while
others have been gradual but persistent. This paper reviews
and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in
market distortions and the political-economy explanations
that have been advanced. Based on a rich global data set

Inappropriate regulation can influence
productivity performance by affecting incentives to invest
and adopt new technologies, as well as by directly curbing
competitive pressures. Results of a labor productivity
growth model for European countries suggest that improving
the regulatory environment -- proxied by the Worldwide
Governance Indicators regulatory quality indicator -- and
boosting effective exposure to competition through

Reduction of carbon emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation has been identified as
a cost effective element of the post-Kyoto strategy to
achieve long-term climate objectives. Its success depends
primarily on the design and implementation of a financial
mechanism that provides land-holders sufficient incentives
to participate in such scheme. This paper proposes
self-enforcing contracts (relational contracts) as a

Biodiversity, a property of natural
areas, provides a range of benefits to the economy including
bioprospecting rents, knowledge and insurance, ecotourism
fees, and ecosystem services. Many of these values can be
broken out in the System of National Accounts, leading to
better estimates of the economic losses when natural areas
are degraded or destroyed. Developing countries harbor the
great majority of biodiversity, and this diversity provides

There are two common problems in flood
hydrology: 1) estimate the return period for a given flood;
and 2) estimate the flood for a given return period. A
commonly used procedure to solve these problems is to fit a
probability density function such as the Gumbel, Pearson
type three or the generalized extreme value distributions to
the historical data. The Pearson probability distribution
was named after the statistician Pearson, it is also called

Mali, a landlocked West African nation
at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, has introduced a
program to produce biodiesel using jatropha curcas, a
non-edible shrub widely available throughout the country by
farmers for generations as a living fence for their gardens.
The aim of the program is to partially substitute diesel,
which is entirely supplied through imports, with domestic
biodiesel produced from a feedstock that does not have any

Russian economy has been growing at an
average nominal rate of 6 percent annually for the past
decade. Among the most important factors contributing to its
expansion has been the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas. In
2000, when Vladimir Putin took office, the cost of oil was
approximately $20 a barrel; at the end of his term, it was
five times higher. Meanwhile, the competitiveness of Russian
enterprises has become increasingly fragile because of the

This Country Economic Memorandum (CEM)
looks at the broad reform program, including institutional,
governance, and economic restructuring reforms Romania is
pursuing, which are anchored in its process for accession to
the European Union (EU). The challenge is to expand
integration with the EU more broadly throughout the economy,
by relying on market driven mechanisms in a predictable
rules-based policy environment, with the state sharply

This Country Economic Memorandum (CEM)
looks at the broad reform program, including institutional,
governance, and economic restructuring reforms Romania is
pursuing, which are anchored in its process for accession to
the European Union (EU). The challenge is to expand
integration with the EU more broadly throughout the economy,
by relying on market driven mechanisms in a predictable
rules-based policy environment, with the state sharply