Journal Article
Weather Shocks and Cropland Decisions in Rural Mozambique
Economic development in low income settings is often associated with an expansion of higher-value agricultural activities. Since these activities often bring new risks, an understanding of cropland decisions and how these interact with shocks is...
Policy Brief
Access to Land and Land Policy Reforms
The objective of this research and policy brief is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of the political economy...
Journal Special Issue
Land and Property Rights
This special issue of the Journal of Development Economics originates from a UNU-WIDER research project on land inequality and decentralized governance in LDCs. The research began in late 2010 with Dilip Mookherjee and Pranab Bardhan jointly...
Book Chapter
Access to Land
By applying a unified framework, this book examines the impact of land tenure reforms on poverty reduction and natural resource management in countries in Africa and Asia with highly diverse historical contexts. These land tenure reforms include Land...
Working Paper
Changes in Land Tenure and Agricultural Intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa
Due to increasing population pressure on limited cultivable land in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), farm size has been shrinking, fallow periods have been shortened, and soil fertility has been declining. In accordance with the Boserupian...
Working Paper
Tenure Insecurity, Climate Variability, and Renting-Out Decisions Among Female Smallholder Farmers in Ethiopia
Land tenure arrangements in Africa are generally skewed in favour of males. Compared to males, female plot owners face complex sets of constraints and systemic high tenure insecurity which culminate in low yields. In order to obtain better returns...
Journal Article
The Efficiency of India's Cities
One reason for unsatisfactory public service delivery in Indian cities is that city finances are in poor condition. Recent research shows that given the fragmented institutional arrangements for land in India's cities, there is a case for...
Working Paper
Rising Wealth Inequality and Changing Social Structure in Rural China, 1988-95
The paper finds that a new system of social stratification is emerging in rural China in the wake of economic reforms, one that is far less equal than what preceded it. As part of this trend, wealth inequality has increased markedly in a short period...
Working Paper
Land Ownership Inequality and the Income Distribution Consequences of Economic Growth
While unequal land ownership has a role to play in explaining historically high levels of income inequality, this paper asks what role agrarian structure plays in explaining contemporary trends of increasing income inequality. Using a Gini...
Working Paper
Land tenure security and internal migration in Tanzania
In this paper we study the impact of tenure security on rural to urban migration of household members over the age of 15. Using three waves of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey (NPS) data, we show that tenure security is associated with lower...
Working Paper
Inter- and intra-farm land fragmentation in Vietnam
This paper uses panel data at commune, household, and plot levels to study the causes and effects of agricultural land fragmentation in rural Vietnam. We focus on both inter-farm fragmentation (the division of land into many small farms) and intra...
Journal Article
The Forgotten Property Rights
Studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both...
Working Paper
Growth and Entitlements
In the preceding pages we have attempted a detailed rebuttal of the view that, given the prevailing structural constraints imposed by the unequal distribution of land and other assets, growth through Green Revolution must impoverish, or at best by...