Intro -- Contents -- About the Authors -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Overview -- Background and Motivation -- Key Results and Policy Recommendations for Pilot Countries -- Next Steps in Scaling Up LGAF Implementation -- 1. Why Is a Land Governance Framework Needed? -- Why It Is...

Intro -- Contents -- Cover -- Title -- Foreword ix -- Acknowledgments xiii -- Executive Summary xvii -- 1 Introduction 1 -- 2 Property Rights to Land 7 -- 3 Land Transactions 79 -- 4 Fostering Socially Desirable Land Use 133 -- Appendix: Regional Workshops 193 -- Glossary 205 -- References 207...

The importance of good land governance to strengthen women's land rights, facilitate land-related investment, transfer land to better uses, use it as collateral, and allow effective decentralization through collection of property taxes has long been recognized. The challenges posed by recent...

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...

Almost a decade after large land-based investment for agriculture increased sharply, opinions on its impact continue to diverge, partly because (positive or negative) spillovers on neighboring smallholders have never been rigorously assessed. Applying methods from the urban literature on...

This study uses data from the complete computerization of agricultural leases in Malawi, a georeferenced farm survey, and satellite imagery to document the opportunities and challenges of land-based investment in novel ways. Although 1.5 million hectares, or 25 percent, of Malawi's agricultural...

Many African countries rely on sporadic land transfers from customary to statutory domains to attract investment and improve agricultural performance. Data from 15,000 smallholders and 800 estates in Malawi allow exploring the long-term effects of such a strategy. The results suggest that (i)...

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....