The success of reducing carbon emissions
from deforestation and forest degradation depends on the
design of an effective financial mechanism that provides
landholders sufficient incentives to participate and provide
additional and permanent carbon offsets. This paper proposes
self-enforcing contracts as a potential solution for the
constraints in formal contract enforcement derived from the
stylized facts of reducing emissions from deforestation and

This paper studies the impact of a large
debt relief program, intended to attenuate investment
constraints among highly-indebted households in rural India.
It isolates the causal effect of bankruptcy-like debt relief
settlements using a natural experiment arising from
India's Debt Relief Program for Small and Marginal
Farmers -- one of the largest debt relief initiatives in
history. The analysis shows that debt relief has a

Despite several attempts at reform,
immovable property rights in Albania are not adequately
secure and represent an important governance challenge.
Problems have resulted from incomplete first title
registration, the lack of accurate cadastral records, and,
in many cases, the absence of reliable evidence of
ownership. Although Albania has adopted legislation calling
for restitution or compensation for owners whose property

The objective of this review of
resettlement policy and implementation in Brazil, is to
identify ongoing good practices, as well as areas for
further improvement. It draws upon an assessment of the
Brazilian legal and institutional framework related to land
acquisition for projects in the public interest, a rapid
evaluation of the resettlement programs in six projects
(three projects that received Bank financing and three

Kosovo's economic growth in the
past decade has been solid, yet, with a gross domestic
product (GDP) per capita of 1,760, the country remains one
of the poorest in Europe. The end of the conflict, output
was growing at double-digit rates, driven by the
donor-funded reconstruction efforts. Since 2005, annual
growth has decelerated to below 5 percent. However, the
other countries in Southeast Europe have been growing

The Romanian government recognizes that
there are current and future problems related to the risk of
old-age poverty among elderly farmers, and has been working
on sustainable solutions to avert this risk. The main
objective of this report is to provide recommendations to
the policy makers in Romania in designing a non-contributory
program for poor elderly, including farmers. To this end,
the report (i) evaluates the current semi-subsistence

Economic growth in Solomon Islands since
the end of civil conflict in 2003 has been driven by rapid
expansion of the forestry sector and large increases in
international aid flows. Stocks of natural forest logs are
nearing exhaustion and, as the security situation improves,
aid flows are likely to flatten off. The Solomon Islands
Government asked the World Bank to investigate future growth
prospects. This note summarizes the findings and presents a

The paper assesses the costs and
household level benefits of migrating overseas from
Bangladesh. The authors survey households who have had
overseas migrants to assess their characteristics compared
to non-migrants. They also compute various types of
migration and remittance related transaction costs and
discuss the channels by which overseas migration is
financed, remittances sent and the constraints faced by the

In 2008 the Government of Pakistan
agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to
increase the tax/Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio by 3.5
percentage points over the medium term. This commitment has
rekindled the debate regarding the agricultural income tax.
Advocates of an agricultural income tax argue that the
sector remains protected by political interests, while
opponents to such a tax maintain that agriculture is already

The objective of this policy note on
land is to assist the Government of Moldova in improving the
effectiveness of land management in agriculture, with a view
to enhancing the sector's contribution to
Moldova's economic growth and poverty reduction
objectives. The note reviews the progress that has been
made to date on land reform in Moldova, and provides
rigorous economic analysis of the impacts of the reforms and

This paper discusses the social impacts
of Costa Rica's Payments for Environmental Services
(PSA) program and their effect on rural poverty. Although
the analysis is hampered by significant information gaps, we
believe that the PSA Program has probably managed to have an
impact on the poor. This impact is almost certainly positive
on the poor who were able to participate, but is difficult
to quantify. However, except for very few cases, it seems

Although sharecropping has long
fascinated economists, the determinants of this contractual
form are still poorly understood and the debate over the
extent of moral hazard is far from settled. The authors
address both issues by emphasizing the role of landlord
supervision. When tenant effort is observable, but at a cost
to the landlord, otherwise identical share-tenants can
receive different levels of supervision and have different