While climate change is likely to
increase weather risks in many developing countries, there
is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate
adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a
program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving
households' risk-management through income
diversification. The intervention targeted agricultural
households exposed to weather shocks related to changes in

This paper investigates the impact of
increases in wheat flour prices on household food security
using unique nationally-representative data collected in
Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008. It uses a new estimator, the
Unconditional Quantile Regression estimator, based on
influence functions, to examine the marginal effects of
price increases at different locations on the distributions
of several food security measures. The estimates reveal that

The developmental impact of institutions to establish and maintain secure property rights to land has been a subject of much debate. The authors review the literature on the impact of land administration interventions in specific contexts, highlighting the dependence of outcomes on the governance environment, the effectiveness of the state apparatus, and the distribution of socio-economic power.

Is Land Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa Cost-Effective? A cost benefit analysis suggests that the current system of formal titling should not be extended in rural Madagascar and that any new system of land registration would have to be quite inexpensive to be worthwhile. Indeed, establishing a modern property rights system without legally recognizing informal rights may expand the scope for rent-seeking, thus creating additional insecurity (Atwood 1990).

In 2011 the Ghanaian government issued a policy establishing Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) for the purpose of implementing infrastructure projects and improving the capacity of services provision. A World Bank Mission visited Ghana early in 2012 to assess the legal and practical feasibility of participation in PPPs at the sub-national level of the Government and the possibility that private commercial banks can provide non-sovereign financing to such PPPs.

Increased levels and volatility of food
prices has led to a surge of interest in large-scale
agriculture and land acquisition. This creates challenges
for policy makers aiming to establish a policy environment
conducive to an agrarian structure to contribute to
broad-based development in the long term. Based on a
historical review of episodes of growth of large farms and
their impact, this paper identifies factors underlying the

Although increased global demand for
land has led to renewed interest in African land tenure, few
models to address these issues quickly and at the required
scale have been identified or evaluated. The case of
Rwanda's nation-wide and relatively low-cost land
tenure regularization program is thus of great interest.
This paper evaluates the short-term impact (some 2.5 years
after completion) of the pilots undertaken to fine-tune the

Despite strong beliefs that property
titling and registration will enhance credit access,
empirical evidence in support of such effects remains scant.
The gradual roll-out of computerization of land registry
systems across Andhra Pradesh's 387 sub-registry
offices allows us to combine quarterly administrative data
on credit disbursed by all commercial banks for an
eleven-year period (1997-2007) aggregated to the

The development and business communities
involved in the African agriculture and agribusiness sectors
have recently experienced a strong resurgence of interest in
promoting value chains as an approach that can help design
interventions geared to add value, lower transaction costs,
diversify rural economies, and contribute to increasing
rural household incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
countries. Enhancing value chain competitiveness is

The World Bank's strategy for
Africa's future recognizes the central importance of
industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the consequent
creation of productive jobs for Africans, which have long
been a preoccupation of African leaders and policy makers.
This book represents an attempt to address these issues. The
book stresses that, while the recent turnaround in
Africa's economic growth is encouraging, this growth

An adequate supply of infrastructure
services has long been viewed by both academics and policy
makers as a key ingredient for economic development. Over
the past quarter-century, the retrenchment of Latin
America's public sector from its dominant position in
the provision of infrastructure, and the opening up of these
industries to private participation, have renewed the debate
on the role of infrastructure in the region's

This paper describes the economic
importance of the service sector in Central European Free
Trade Agreement (CEFTA) countries and current barriers to
trade in services between CEFTA countries. It looks at four
sectors: construction, land transport, legal services, and
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services. The
intent is to stimulate dialogue on trade in services between
decision-makers in CEFTA countries. In CEFTA economies,