Benin has made substantial progress over
the past decade in reinforcing macroeconomic stability,
which has laid the foundation for modest but accelerating
growth. After averaging less than 3.7 percent from
2007-2011, GDP growth rose to 5.4 percent in 2012 and
reached 5.6 percent in 2013. Growth is expected to remain
strong at 5.5 percent in 2014. Benin s enhanced growth
performance has been supported by ongoing efficiency

According to global spatial data sets in
2000 more than one-third of the rural population in
developing countries was located on less favored
agricultural land and areas. Less favored agricultural lands
are susceptible to low productivity and degradation, because
their agricultural potential is constrained biophysically by
terrain, poor soil quality, or limited rainfall. Less
favored agricultural areas include less favored agricultural

This report reviews the role that safety
nets have played in Tanzania and explores options on how
they can contribute in accelerating poverty reduction in
Tanzania, focusing on mechanisms for giving transfers to the
poor. The report shows that given the large numbers of poor
in Tanzania and the country s limited resources, it is
essential that safety net interventions be well-targeted and
efficiently organized. Significant amounts of money are

This issue of the Research digest
newsletter contains the following topics of interest: how to
move the exchange rate if you must; focus - urbanization and
poverty reduction; Turkey's export boom in the 2000s;
social protection, poverty, and the post-2015 agenda;
village India: the growing importance of the nonfarm sector;
incentive audits: a new tool for preventing financial
crises?; and, biodiversity and national accounting.

In this issue: dollar a day revisited;
focus: strategies for developing countries; farm policy in
developing countries: what next? Land in transition: reform
and poverty in rural Vietnam; unpredictable aid;
microfinance meets the market; and development impact of the
war on drugs.

The Land Use Consolidation Act (LUC) was introduced in 2008 and is an important
component of agricultural policy in Rwanda. As part of the Government of Rwanda’s
broader Crop Intensification Program (CIP), LUC entails participating farmers
consolidating aspects of their operations with neighboring farmers, while retaining
individual ownership of their parcels. LUC farmers also agree to grow a single priority
crop that has been identified by the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) as best suited to

... Large-scale agricultural investments – in plantations, processing plants or contract farming schemes, for example – have increased in recent years, particularly in developing countries. Investment in the agriculture sector can bring much needed support for rural development, but communities have also witnessed significant negative impacts. Some of the most serious involve local landholders being displaced from their lands and losing access to

Differences in relative female
employment by soil texture are used to explain the
heterogeneous deficit of female children across districts
within India. Soil texture varies exogenously and determines
the depth of land tillage. Deep tillage, possible in loamy
but not in clayey soil textures, reduces the demand for
labor in agricultural tasks traditionally performed by
women. Girls have a lower economic value where female labor

This report identifies the key drivers
of rapid poverty reduction in Bhutan over the recent years,
explaining why some dzongkhags are stuck in poverty or
reducing poverty is not significant while others prospered,
and whether female headed households have a harder time
reducing poverty. The exercise draws mainly on data from the
two rounds of Bhutan Living Standards Survey (2007 and 2012)
supplemented with focus group discussions carried out for

This paper develops a dynamic model that
explains the pattern of population and production allocation
in an economy with an urban location and a rural one.
Agglomeration economies make urban dwellers benefit from a
larger population living in the city and urban firms become
more productive when they operate in locations with a larger
labor force. However, congestion costs associated with a too
large population size limit the process of urban-rural

Conventional wisdom holds that
Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite
the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing
agricultural growth in the region is expected to come
largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved
technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and
other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet
following several years of high food prices, concerted

Land is an integral part of people’s culture, economy, and livelihoods. Social and temporal mobility of people affect land acquisition, distribution, and utilization, which consequently impacts on food security and human wellbeing. Using the data collected by means of household survey, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and participant observation, this paper examines the dynamics of land-people relationships, mainly acquisition, redistribution, and reutilization of land, in the context of human migration.