A large national farm panel from India covering a quarter century (1982, 1999, and 2008) is used to show that the inverse farm size-yield relationship weakened significantly over time, despite an increase in the dispersion of farm sizes. Key reasons are substitution of capital for labor in...

This paper uses a large national household panel from 1999/2000 and 2007/08 to analyze the short-term effects of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme on wages, labor supply, agricultural labor use, and productivity. The scheme prompted a 10-point wage increase and...

As part of a national experiment, in 2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property rights reforms, including complete registration of all land together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity design with spatial...

As part of a national experiment in 2008, Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property rights reforms, including complete registration of all land together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate migration restrictions. A triple difference approach using the Statistics...

While scholars agree on the importance of land rental markets for structural transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent and nature of their operation, including potential obstacles to their improved functioning, remains limited. This study uses household-level data from six countries...

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) form a blueprint that is agreed to by all the world's countries and its leading development institutions. The first seven goals are mutually reinforcing and are directed at reducing poverty in all its forms. The last goal, global partnership for...

Seventy-five percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most are involved in agriculture. In the 21st century, agriculture remains fundamental to economic growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability. The World Bank's Agriculture and rural development publication series...

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...