Increasing awareness of food safety issues has led to intensive use of sanitary, phytosanitary and quality-related regulations and standards, imposing a burden on exporting countries worldwide. This study assesses the impact of such regulations and standards estimating a gravity model for...

We estimate the impact of aggregate indicators of “soft” and “hard” infrastructure on the export performance of developing countries. We derive four new indicators for more than 100 countries over the period 2004–07. Estimates show that trade facilitation reforms do improve the export...

African countries have hardly used the opportunity to implement CDM projects and thereby turn environmental problems into business and development opportunities. This paper finds out why by identifying factors of CDM partnerships. Our gravity model analyzes flows of Certified Emission Reductions...

This paper examines how dissimilarity of partner country characteristics affects the change in trade flows under a preferential trade agreement (PTA). Our results show that the more similar the partner countries are, the larger the increase in intra-bloc trade is under a PTA. Particularly, there...

Indigenous peoples have sometimes sought the formalization of their customary territories to ensure the enforcement of their borders. The process of formalization, however, generates new conflicts. The process of constituting collective territories is intimately related to the constitution of...

This paper evaluates the impact of strengthening legal rights on the types of economic opportunities pursued. Ethiopia changed its family law, expanding wives’ access to marital property and removing restrictions to working outside the home. This reform was initially rolled out in the two...

This essay introduces five papers investigating land tenure issues related to conserving tropical forests via incentive-based strategies (e.g., PES, REDD+). After briefly reviewing key terms and concepts, we point to important contributions from the papers regarding (a) a deeper theoretical and...

This paper assesses proponent activities to address tenure insecurity in light of actions required for effective and equitable implementation of REDD+. Field research was carried out at 19 REDD+ project sites and 71 villages in Brazil, Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Results show...

Vietnam’s 1993 Land Law created a land market by granting households land-use rights which could be exchanged, leased, and mortgaged. Using a matched household sample from Vietnam’s 2004 and 2008 Household Living Standards Survey, this study analyzes whether land titling for women led to...

Extensive previous work has analyzed the functioning of collective ownership institutions, arguing that such institutions can better govern common pool resources under some conditions than private or state ownership. However, empirical research regarding the impact of stronger collective...