Although there has been considerable recent interest in micro-credit programs, rigorous evidence on the impacts of forming self-help groups to mobilize savings and foster social empowerment at the local level is virtually non-existent, despite a large number of programs following this pattern....

Despite their potential importance and ease of modification, impacts of monitoring and loan recovery arrangements on micro-credit groups' repayment performance have rarely been studied. Data on 3,350 expired group loans in 300 Indian villages highlight that regular monitoring and audits, high...

Despite the popularity and unique nature of women's self-help groups in India, evidence of their economic impacts is scant. Based on two rounds of a 2,400 household panel, the authors use double differences, propensity score matching, and pipeline comparison to assess economic impacts of longer...

Agriculture has made major contributions to China's economic growth and poverty reduction, but the literature has rarely focused on the institutional factors that might underpin such structural transformation and productivity. This paper aims to fill that gap. Drawing on an 8-year panel of 1,200...

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...

Although good and timely information on agricultural production is critical for policy-decisions, the quality of underlying data is often low and improving data quality could have a high payoff. This paper uses data from a production diary, administered concurrently with a standard household...

As countries increasingly strive to transform their economies from agriculture-based into a diversified one, land rental will become of greater importance. It will thus be critical to complement research on the efficiency of specific land rental arrangements -- such as sharecropping -- with an...

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...

The 2007-2008 upsurge in agricultural commodity prices gave rise to widespread concern about investors causing a "global land rush". Large land deals can provide opportunities for better access to capital, transfer of technology, and advances in productivity and employment generation. But they...

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...