The creation of optimal land institutions attracted renewed attention in the 1990s because of its central role in the transition process in former Communist countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and more recently because of large-scale land investments in developing countries....

Land regulations have a major impact on economic development, especially in agrarian societies, and they continue to affect the efficiency of the rural economy when economies further develop. This paper aims to give an overview of the regulations that are present in the land market in the EU...

As recently as a century ago, one out of two people in Europe was employed in the agricultural sector. Today agriculture represents only a small fraction of total employment in most EU member states. What makes this decline in agricultural employment even more striking is that this evolution has...

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect allocation of assets and welfare, using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the...

This paper studies the political economy of relief aid allocation using empirical evidence from relief programs after a major cyclone (Gafilo) hit Madagascar in March 2004. Relief was provided by the Government of Madagascar as well as local and international aid agencies. Aid allocation was...

This paper analyses the distributional effects of decoupled Single Farm Payments (SFP) in the European Union. In a static world the SFP benefit only farmers, irrespective of the implemented SFP model and irrespective of whether entitlements are tradable or not, except when the size of the...

An emerging literature on standards, global supply chains, and development argues that enhanced quality and safety standards are major trade barriers for developing country exports and cause the marginalization of small businesses and poor households in developing countries. This paper is the...

Local capture of public expenditures is an important problem for service delivery and poverty reduction in developing countries. Standard anticorruption institutions may not be effective, as these tend often to be corrupt themselves. This paper analyses the impact of monitoring and information...

There is no consensus about how globalization -trade and foreign investments ?affects poverty reduction. Using household survey data, this study contributes to the empirical literature on globalization and poverty by analyzing the household-level implications of increased foreign investments and...