This paper uses farm panel data from
China to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine
investments, and the demand for machine services. Recently,
China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion
of machine rentals and machine services provided by
specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization
of agricultural production. The empirical results show that
an increase in nonagricultural wage rates leads to expansion

Renato and Hecinta are raising six young
children in a rural area of Mozambique’s northern Nampula
Province. On just half a hectare, they grow rice, maize,
beans, cashew, peanuts, cabbage, and tomatoes, selling what
they can and eating the rest. But, like many of the 475
million smallholder household’s worldwide, agricultural
production is just one of their many income-generating
activities. They balance several sources of income, within

The report Africa Can Help Feed Africa
(World Bank 2012) showed that increasing food staples1
supply can be met by better connecting African markets to
each other. That report called for a stronger focus on
removing trade barriers and building on the forces of
regional integration. This report builds on the lessons of
Africa Can Help Feed Africa by looking into the specific
circum¬stances met in West Africa, home to one-third of the

This Fifth Edition of the Uganda
Economic Update presents evidence that if the urbanization
process is well managed, it has the potential to stimulate
economic growth and to provide productive jobs for a greater
proportion of Uganda s young and rapidly expanding
population. In many countries across the world, the growth
of cities has stimulated the establishment and expansion of
productive businesses by reducing the distance between

Climate change is a critical issue
facing the countries of the Nile basin. While individual
weather events are difficult to attribute to climate change,
their sum is already having adverse effects on socioeconomic
conditions across the region. While climate change was not
an overt focus of the Nile basin initiative’s (NBI’s)
mandate when it was launched in 1999, it has emerged as a
key challenge for countries of the Nile to take seriously.

This report is the result of a World
Bank mission that visited Paraguay in June 2013 at the
request of the Government of Paraguay. The mission’s
objective was to identify, quantify, and prioritize
agriculture risks that determine the volatility of
agriculture gross domestic product (GDP), based on a
methodology to assess sector risks developed by the World
Bank. The methodology stipulates a two-phase process. The

A slow-moving tropical depression caused
persistent heavy rains in the Solomon Islands between April
1 and 4, 2014. The highest recorded daily rainfall
associated with this event was 318mm in Honiara on April 3.
The rains caused flash flooding in Honiara, Guadalcanal,
Isabel, Malaita, and Makira-Ulawa. More than 732mm of rain
was recorded over four days at the Honiara rain gauge,
although heavier rainfall was reported inland. On April 5,

Watershed management has come to be
recognized as a critical issue in the Nile Basin. Upstream
land use can cause degradation and soil erosion, resulting
in lower agricultural yields locally and causing
sedimentation downstream. The increased sediment load causes
economic problems by reducing water quality, and irrigation
and hydropower potential, as well as increasing flooding.
This note shows how, through Basin-wide cooperation, the

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most
common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide
evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake
collective actions for the provision of public goods within
village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper
shows that an elected official, whose aim is to maximize
re-election chances, exerts higher effort in providing
public goods when private citizens undertake collective

This report highlights recent economic
updates in Bangladesh as of April 2015. Economic growth in
Bangladesh was gaining momentum in the first half of FY15.
Capacity utilization improved and investments were showing
some signs of recovery. This growth was also job-friendly.
The 12-monthly-moving average inflation decelerated from 7.6
percent in February 2014 to 6.8 percent in February 2015.
The resilience of the Bangladesh economy continues to be

In this context, this note summarizes
the findings of a recent World Bank, SACU Secretariat
assessment of regional trade facilitation based on the Trade
and Transport Facilitation Assessment (TTFA) methodology.
The assessment looks at regional trade facilitation through
the lens of value chains, with the objective to understand
how the region’s trade and transport environment could be
improved to facilitate more extensive and deeply integrated

The Palestinian economy has experienced
strong growth in recent years. This report examines the
economic benefits of lifting the restrictions on movement
and access, as well as other administrative obstacles, to
Palestinian investment and economic activity in a region
known as Area C. This region constitutes about 61 percent of
the West Bank territory and was defined under the Oslo Peace
Accords as the area that eventually would be transferred to