We investigate donor–beneficiary relationships in participatory development programmes, where (i) communities are heterogeneous and dominated by the local elite, (ii) the elite strategically proposes a project to the donor, knowing that the latter has imperfect knowledge of the needs of the...

This wide-ranging book, based on a report to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, bridges the gap between the enormous amount of empirical literature documenting efforts at managing local-level resources and the quickly growing body of theoretical knowledge dealing with...

Land is a fundamental productive asset in agrarian economies. The rules that codify access to land and the way jurisdiction over land is distributed among members of a community have a powerful influence over how efficiently land is used, the incidence of poverty, and the level of inequality in...

The empirical literature has established a strong link between the fact of being a Muslim-dominated country and indicators of political performance and democracy. This suggests the possible existence of a relation between religion, Islam in this instance, and societal characteristics. Bernard...

[eng] Malthus and the problem of underdevelopment : one or two theories ?. Jean-Philippe Platteau. The present paper purports to deal with Malthus's ideas about underdeveloped countries. It will examine these ideas as they have been developed by Malthus in the context of his two most famous...

We analyze the individualization of farm units in Mali in the sense of a transformation of purely collective farms into mixed units in which private plots coexist with collective fields. While a moral-hazard-in-team problem plagues production on the latter, a dilemma arises insofar as the...

Common wisdom as well as sound analytical arguments suggest that stronger punishment of deviant behavior meted out by a principal typically prompts the agents to better conform with his objectives. Addressing the specific issue of donor-beneficiary relationships in the context of participatory...

Common wisdom as well as well-grounded analytical arguments suggest that stronger punishment of deviant behavior meted out by a principal typically prompts the agents to better conform with his objectives. Addressing the specific issue of donor-beneficiary relationships in the context of...

If we understand well the individualization of land tenure rules under conditions of growing land scarcity and increased market integration, much less is known about the mode of evolution of the farm-cum-family units possessing the land. Inspired by first-hand evidence from West Africa, this...