For local people in sub-Saharan Africa, large land investment projects currently imply many risks and few benefits. Drawing on own ethical and economic research and using evidence from the authors' case studies in Kenya, Mali and Zambia and a new database of large-scale land acquisitions...

Major DAC donors are widely criticized for weak targeting of aid, selfish aid motives and insufficient coordination. The emergence of an increasing number of new donors may further complicate the coordination of international aid efforts. On the other hand, new donors (many of which were aid...

Using a new dataset for 41 German non-governmental organizations (NGOs), we analyze the allocation of NGO aid across recipient countries in a Tobit regression framework. By identifying for each NGO the degree of public refinancing, we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial...

Employing a unique dataset that covers households from six West African capitals, this paper provides new evidence on the demand for informal sector products and services. We first investigate whether demand linkages exist between formal and informal products and distribution channels, and...

A core result of the aid allocation literature is that the quality of governance in recipient countries does not affect the amounts of foreign aid received. Donor countries may still give aid to poorly-governed countries because of a dilemma they face: those countries most in need typically also...

The aid allocation literature has neglected gender-specific needs for aid. We assess the hypothesis that gender inequality in education is more likely to affect the aid allocation of donor countries with female leadership in the relevant ministry. We find no evidence for a needs-based allocation...

Large-scale agricultural land acquisitions might entail substantial welfare implications for the affected rural population. Whether the impacts are indeed as devastating as the popular notion of land grabs would suggest depends on a number of factors, including the size of compensation payments,...

Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) typically depend on strong formal institutions and market-oriented intensive farming, whereas informal institutions tend to characterize the traditional villages located around them. We investigate changes to social capital in such villages when LSAIs...

Afrika hat sich seit der Jahrtausendwende zu einer der am schnellsten wachsenden Regionen der Welt entwickelt. Vieles deutet darauf hin, dass Afrikas Aufschwung nicht allein durch Ressourcenreichtum und steigende Rohstoffpreise getrieben wurde, sondern auch mit einem erheblichen Strukturwandel...

This article provides an introduction to the special feature on agriculture-related issues in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) contained in this issue of Journal of Agricultural Economics. The special feature is motivated by the increased interest which these...