Land-use policies shape the spatial allocation of infrastructure, services, and development and thus have direct implications for welfare. This paper examines the effects of Colombia’s municipal territorial plan updates on poverty through the lens of the housing and services channel. Using municipality-level data from 2005 to2023 and quasi-experimental treatment-effects methods, we find that in a matched design with extensive controls, plan updates reduce multidimensional poverty by roughly 1.6 percentage points. The gains are concentrated in smaller and medium-sized municipalities, especially those implementing broader plans (EOTs) and those with mid-range administrative capacity. Channel-specific estimates point to improvements in water access and housing quality. Overall, the findings indicate that the welfare impacts of planning reforms are real but place dependent, highlighting the roles of local capacity and baseline service deficits in determining whether regulatory updates translate into observable improvements.

This paper develops a spatial equilibrium model to assess the economic and social impacts of public housing in China. Our results indicate that for direct beneficiaries, access to public housing delivers immediate financial relief, elevates welfare, and facilitates upward mobility in the housing market. Moreover, the policy induces a filtering effect that mitigates demand pressures, curtails speculative behavior, and improves affordability across the broader housing market. More importantly, affordable housing options stimulate self-investment in human capital and attract high-skilled labor, thereby fostering human capital agglomeration and enhancing total factor productivity for sustained macroeconomic expansion. However, these gains are contingent on fiscal and social capital investments and are accompanied by challenges such as eligibility-induced inequality, sandwich class issues, and labor market distortions. Our counterfactual policy experiments demonstrate that expanding eligibility, particularly by relaxing income thresholds, offers a more cost-effective pathway for fostering collective and distributive growth than adjusting subsidy mechanisms.

Supply-side constraints are important drivers of land and housing market dynamics. I propose a new “regulatory tax” measure to capture different taxes, fees, and costs incurred during real estate development. Based on a spatial equilibrium framework, I show that in response to higher regulatory taxes, developers bid less for land plots and reduce housing construction, leading to higher housing prices. Empirically, I spatially match 13,987 residential projects with the corresponding land transaction records in China, and exploit rich information on house sales, land prices, construction costs, and developer profits to estimate regulatory taxes. I find regulatory tax accounts for, on average, 38% of house price and varies substantially across 281 cities. Exploiting a panel dataset of Chinese cities (2008-2024), I show that regulatory taxes push up housing prices, reduce housing construction, and discourage land supply. Eventually, new homebuyers and local governments would need to bear the costs of excessive regulations.

Cities are increasingly relaxing building height limits to expand housing supply, yet in dense urban areas, redevelopment requires replacing existing buildings and depends on both current incentives and expectations about future policy. This paper examines developer responses to regulatory relaxation under evolving uncertainty, leveraging two major upzoning shocks in Hong Kong driven by innovations in airport operations. Using 30m × 30m grid-level data spanning three decades and a spatial regression discontinuity design, the analysis shows that large-scale relaxation of land-use restrictions can overcome the frictions posed by durable structures and spur substantial redevelopment once uncertainty resolves. However, policy uncertainty -- particularly when it raises expectations of more favorable future changes -- increases the option value of waiting and delays investment. These findings highlight the importance of credible, well-timed, and comprehensive reforms for expanding housing supply in built-out cities, and offer broader lessons for governments designing urban land-use and housing policies.

Using linked property transaction data and credit records, we document group-level differences in financial distress before and after transitioning into homeownership. Black and female borrowers experience larger increases in post-purchase delinquency relative to White and male borrowers, respectively, as measured by 30+ day and 90+ day delinquency rates, even after accounting for stringent controls, credit score, and income-at-purchase. Post-purchase, Black and female borrowers also accumulate more student debt, while credit card balances rise for everyone, but faster for Black borrowers. Understanding disparities in sustaining homeownership informs our assessment of racial and gender disparities in the financial benefits of homeownership.

We identify and quantify a novel gender gap in the housing market for singles in South Asia. Using nationally representative data from India, we document that single women face a housing cost premium of 3-4% relative to men. We leverage detailed data from India's two largest online property listing portals, covering more than 230 cities, we find that shared housing accommodation is listed for rent at a rate that is 6-8% higher for women than for men, after controlling for an extensive set of housing arrangements, amenities, and granular neighborhood fixed effects. We find similar gendered housing premiums in property listings data from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Gaps persist for (gendered) accommodation that is offered within the same building, but vanishes for owners that have listings for both men and women. Variation between cities in this gender gap can be explained by historical gender norms.

Land pooling and readjustment (LR) schemes aim to secure land for public amenities including affordable housing, schools, and healthcare centres while enabling coordinated private development. In Ahmedabad, however, the delivery of public-use plots varies widely: some are fully developed, while others remain vacant or occupied by informal settlements. This study examines why land allocated for public purposes is often not transferred to or developed by the municipal government. Qualitative fieldwork reveals an incentive structure in which officials prioritize smooth private development, leading to the placement of some public-use plots on parcels with disputed or incomplete property rights. Such plots are subsequently difficult for the state to acquire and develop. A citywide quantitative model tests these findings using a stratified sample of public-use plots combined with spatial, administrative, and ownership-conflict data. The study provides new evidence on how institutionalized incentives shape the effectiveness of LR in delivering essential public amenities.

I exploit Delhi's 2014 Floor Area Ratio reform, which raised allowable FAR by 33-60% for residential parcels exceeding 750 square meters, to examine whether relaxing land-use regulations improves housing affordability in developing countries. Using satellite-derived building heights at 4m resolution, administrative parcel boundaries, and proprietary housing data in a sharp regression discontinuity design, I find economically negligible height increases of 0.58-0.74 meters (3-14%) nine years post-reform, with no spillovers to neighboring parcels. Despite 306% nominal price increases, the formal housing market exhibited no significant supply expansion. Peripheral areas showed treatment effects four times larger than central zones, inverting standard bid-rent gradients. I develop a structural model demonstrating that upzoning can fail when developers face convex construction costs, favor horizontal fragmentation, and are forward-looking. These findings suggest relaxing land-use regulations is necessary but insufficient for addressing housing affordability in contexts with coordination failures, institutional frictions, and weak property rights.

Farms throughout Asia are predominantly small. In fact, the average operational farm size was already small in the 1970s, ranging from 1 hectare to 4 hectares. The average farm size declined in subsequent periods in almost all countries in Asia. Many studies found an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity in South Asia, indicating that small farms are more efficient than large farms. Since small farms are endowed with a large amount of family labor relative to land, in contrast to large farms which rely on hired labor, the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity tends to arise. Recently, mechanization has been taking place to replace hired labor with machines. According to recent studies, the inverse relationship has been either weakened or reversed to be positive. To maintain a comparative advantage in agriculture in Asia, farm size must be expanded and mechanization must be promoted to save labor.

Farm size is small in China. Ensuring the land tenure rights, structural transformation, and slowdown rural population growth have facilitated farm size expansion, while agricultural mechanization custom service is a double-edged sword as it has helped smallholders’ mechanization and therefore also affected them to abandon crop production. Relationship between farm size and land productivity (yield) has been debated. Given the limited land and water, appropriate farm size is important for national food security, productivity and employment. We expect that farm size for land-intensive crops such as grain and edible oil crops will continue to rise, while farm size for labor-intensive crops such as vegetables and facility crops will keep small but also rise over time. Facilitating structural transformation and division of the land-intensive grain production and the labor- & capital-intensive crop production are key factors that will drive farm size expansion.

This study examines the relationship between farm size and productivity in China’s grain sector, and explores how institutional reforms mediate this link. The Household Responsibility System (1978–84) spurred growth but entrenched small-scale, fragmented farms (<0.65 ha), limiting mechanization. Using nationwide data (2003–2020), we find an inverse U-shaped relationship: productivity peaks on very small farms (<0.5 ha) but declines with scale. Two key reforms help bridge this gap: land rental markets, which consolidate plots into moderate-scale operations (5–15 ha) and raise yields by 10–20%, and outsourced mechanization services, which boost profits by 12–18% and yields by 15–25%. However, small farms (<1 ha) still face 20–30% lower mechanization rates, risking inequality. China’s “service-led scaling” model underscores that institutional adaptability — not just larger farms — is key to sustaining productivity in land-scarce economies.

Inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has been the most widely debated aspects of Indian agriculture. This paper examines the changes in farm size and productivity over the recent decades across the regions and identify the contributing factors. Other objectives include: i) assess the viability of small holder farms, ii) examine the relative shares of factors of production, and iii) explore the potential policy options for strengthening and sustaining smallholder farms in India. The paper also focuses on the role of economic reforms in the rural sector. These include: increased share of non-farm incomes, shifting of large-holders to urban centres for various socioeconomic reasons, improved socioeconomic conditions of the vulnerable rural communities. All these changes despite the fact that agriculture was only at the periphery of the reforms. It is argued that given the numbers coupled with the nature of growth, the current policies are neither effective nor sustainable.

Singapore’s transformation from a struggling port city to a global metropolis is rooted in its strategic approach to land governance, tightly aligning spatial planning with economic development. Through coordinated policies, robust institutions, and innovative land management tools, Singapore maximized its limited land to support industrialization, job creation, and sustained growth. Key strategies included the development of integrated industrial estates, cluster-based innovation districts, and catalytic infrastructure such as Changi Airport. State-led land ownership and flexible leasehold systems enabled rapid adaptation to evolving economic needs, while regional cooperation with Johor expanded opportunities beyond national borders. Singapore’s experience demonstrates how deliberate land use planning, institutional synergy, and infrastructure investment can drive economic transformation and employment, offering valuable lessons for cities worldwide.

This paper analyzes urban planning and land-use control systems in 11 cities across six countries, using a unified research framework. Case studies reveal that all cities examined require reforms, though the specifics vary by location. In some several case studies, current systems are overly complex, costly, and misaligned with financial and technical capacities. The paper discusses and recommends a series of policy actions from comprehensive overhaul, decentralization and simplification, aligning with market needs and emphasizing capacity building. It also suggests that a streamlined version of Japan’s system could serve as a model for other countries. The paper concludes by proposing steps toward more effective and equitable urban planning governance systems.

This study investigates the enduring effects of work-from-home (WFH) trends on urban structure and property prices in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region, utilizing novel data sources, combining high-resolution cell phone mobility data with property listings to track changes in work patterns and their impact on the urban structure (2019 to 2023).The analysis reveals a significant flattening of the rent-distance gradient, elasticity decreasing 40 percent due to changes in WFH patterns. Once we include this determinant in the estimations, the role of distance in explaining the variations in rents (adjusted for house characteristics) is significantly diminished. We discuss the implications of these changes in land use and prices for tax policy in local governments.

Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment initiatives (PILaR) address social diversity in Egypt.

This study examines intricate issues and novel solutions related to land administration, land tenure security, and urban development in Banha City, Egypt. It emphasises the value of land readjustment as a resource in informal urban settlements and the relationship between governance deficiencies and socioeconomic inequalities. This study assesses land management in Egypt during political turmoil, investigates participatory urban development options, and analyses Egypt's complex governance structures. The study was a partnership between the United Nations Humanitarian Organization (UN-Habitat) and the General Organization of Physical Planning (GOPP) at the Ministry of Housing in late 2013. The study investigates the prospective implementation of Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) as a means to address deficiencies in the existing Egyptian planning policy. The study indicates that the accessibility of affordable land in Egyptian cities will impact socio-spatial sustainability transformations.

This paper examines Ethiopia’s evolving land policy and ongoing legal reforms, highlighting their implications for equity, sustainability, and national cohesion. Historically, Ethiopia’s rist and communal tenure systems created fragmentation, inefficiency, and weak accountability. The 1975 Derg reform ended feudalism but replaced private ownership with state control, a model reaffirmed by the 1995 Constitution. While this framework aimed to ensure equitable access, it entrenched tenure insecurity and politicized land governance under ethnic federalism, fueling conflict and displacement. Recent legal initiatives, particularly the Federal Rural Land Administration and Land Use Proclamation No. 1324/202, seek to modernize land administration and enhance tenure security. However, the absence of a comprehensive national land policy, gender inequality, youth landlessness, and environmental degradation remain major challenges. The paper calls for a flexible, inclusive, and climate-resilient land governance framework that integrates human rights, equity, and sustainability to advance Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation and social stability.

This study examines Ethiopia’s emerging Fit-for-Purpose Land Consolidation as a response to land fragmentation that constrains productivity, mechanization, and rural development. Although Ethiopia’s Land Certification programs have strengthened tenure security by registering over 32 million parcels and advancing women’s land rights, they remain grounded in a distributive justice logic that prioritizes equitable parcellation over productive efficiency. The study examines whether land consolidation can facilitate a shift toward an efficiency-oriented land governance model, supporting economies of scale and promoting agricultural transformation. Drawing on three years of empirical research, it applies a theory of change linking voluntary consolidation to improved farm structure, reduced production costs, and higher productivity. Methodologically, it combines desk review with qualitative data from Focus Group Discussions and Interviews. Findings reveal opportunities, including supportive policy frameworks and government commitment, alongside social constraints. The study concludes that land consolidation in Ethiopia requires context-sensitive approaches, balancing efficiency gains with social legitimacy.

Land is a vital resource for rural livelihoods, particularly for women, who have historically faced marginalization in accessing and controlling land in Ethiopia. This study examines the impact of land registration and certification programs on peri-urban women’s land rights in the Amhara National Regional State. Implemented since 2003, the program includes two stages: basic adjudication with paper-based certificates and advanced geo-referenced certification. Findings reveal that second-level certification enhances women’s land tenure security, decision-making power, and access to credit. Women’s involvement in land management decisions, such as crop selection and agricultural input use, has improved, alongside reduced boundary disputes and increased land investments. However, challenges persist, including cultural biases favoring male landholders, limited participation in public meetings, and unequal access to resources. The study recommends policy interventions to address socio-cultural barriers, improve education, and promote gender equality to ensure sustainable empowerment of women in land rights.

Does environmental regulation constrain or catalyze economic development? We study São Paulo's 2002 ban on pre-harvest burning in sugarcane, which forced rapid adoption of mechanical harvesting. Using land slope as an instrument for mechanization costs, we find that regulation-induced technology adoption triggered structural transformation in local labor markets. Mechanization reduced agricultural employment and increased manufacturing employment, accounting for over 75% of observed sectoral shifts between 2000 and 2010. Critically, labor reallocation was selective: employment gains occurred only in agro-linked manufacturing, such as biofuel production and sugar processing, rather than across all industries. This selectivity explains the smooth transition despite the displacement of workers in the agricultural sector. Mechanization also generated economy-wide gains: household incomes rose, unemployment declined, and poverty fell. Our findings demonstrate that environmental regulation can catalyze structural transformation and improve welfare when it forces technology upgrading in contexts with strong agro-industrial linkages.

This paper examines the effects of a climate adaptation policy on production and environmental outcomes in the context of Brazil's semiarid region, the country's poorest and most drought-prone region. The large-scale, low-cost water policy builds rainwater reservoirs designed to boost production and strengthen rural producers' resilience. Using a difference-in-differences approach and linking property-level administrative data to high-resolution satellite data, we find that cistern construction reallocates land toward higher-productivity uses. Results indicate an increase in cropland area by 7.6% and higher-quality pasture area by 14.5%, while lower-quality pasture area decreases by 3.2%. Forest cover increases by 1.1%, consistent with a land-saving effect driven by a reduction of lower-quality pasture. Our cost-benefit analysis reveals a positive aggregate return with each invested monetary unit generating 1.76 units of benefits, indicating that adaptation policies can also advance mitigation goals via forest preservation.

This paper shows that regions with more secure land rights are associated with smaller heat damage to crop yields. After documenting this pattern across countries, we identify this relationship causally using the staggered land registry reform that enhanced land tenure security in Greece. Consistent with our theory, we find that the reform attenuates heat damage because it shifts farmers' adaptation strategies from enlarging croplands to increasing agricultural inputs (capital, labor, and irrigation). Overall, the reform is projected to offset at least two-thirds of Greece's agricultural productivity losses by 2100, underlining the crucial role of institutions in facilitating climate change adaptation.

This paper studies a natural experiment in the usage of satellites for environmental enforcement in India. When the party governing the city of Delhi won power in Punjab, an agricultural state which produces farm fire smoke that causes air pollution in the capital, the new government deployed satellite fire monitoring to put pressure on local bureaucracy to enforce laws against crop burning. Using a border discontinuity design, I show that detected fires fell sharply in Punjab. However, 80 percent of this decline was driven by farmers shifting burn times to evade satellite detection, likely in collusion with local officials. I estimate “hidden fires” using a machine-learning algorithm that imputes the true number of fires from burn scars, which cannot be concealed. A promising technological solution unraveled due to collusive gaming by local bureaucrats and polluters, highlighting Goodhart’s law as a cautionary principle for deploying technology as a tool of government.

In many low to middle income countries, around 70% of land remains undocumented, unmanaged, or unprotected by the state, including in peri-urban and urban areas. The Sustainable Development Goals have established targets to monitor tenure security, prompting the development of initiatives that assess land rights and governance through data collected from experts, practitioners, community representatives, and residents. However, how these toolkits measure land rights and governance—and the extent to which their approaches are comprehensive—remains unclear. This paper provides a systematic critical review of toolkits developed by international organizations and other land rights stakeholders, compiled in the MetRe Library online (at this link). It offers an unprecedented synthesis of empirical approaches to studying de facto land rights and social regulations, while also identifying gaps and proposing improvements. In doing so, the research supports the development of more robust and comprehensive tools to inform both academic inquiry and effective land policy.

Land governance reforms are crucial for inclusive investment and economic resilience, yet data fragmentation and institutional inefficiencies remain major barriers. This study investigates how integrating Financial Technology (FinTech) with administrative land records, survey data, and remote sensing can strengthen land governance in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Using a Sequential Mixed Method design, a quantitative survey of 400+ respondents (analytical sample = 384; Krejcie & Morgan, 1970) is followed by qualitative interviews for explanatory depth. Structured questionnaires measure digital finance usage (independent variables), institutional trust (mediator), and inclusive investment behavior (dependent variable). Administrative cadastral data and satellite imagery spatially anchor transaction and land use patterns. Semi-structured interviews with land administrators, financial providers, and communities explore institutional bottlenecks and FinTech adoption. Econometric modeling, mediation analysis, and spatial diagnostics assess FinTech–investment linkages. The study provides methodological and empirical insights, offering evidence-based strategies for governments and development partners to drive equitable economic transformation.

This first global report on the Status of Land Tenure and Governance brings together tenure- and sex-disaggregated data and analyses from a wide range of sources - including governments, civil society and academia - and across multiple levels, from local to global, with the objective of tracking progress with regards land tenure systems and governance frameworks. It serves policymakers, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, the private sector and academia as a clear and authoritative reference point on land tenure and governance data and analysis. The report supports progress toward numerous SDGs, promotes the uptake of the VGGTs, and contributes to the implementation of other key international frameworks, including the CFS Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (CFS-RAI) and the Rio Conventions.

Forest-governance effectiveness is increasingly linked to gender inclusion, yet cross-national, project-level quantitative evidence remains limited. This study leverages Large-Language Models (LLMs) to overcome these data constraints and provides new empirical evidence on the role of gender policies in improving forest-governance outcomes. We utilize an LLM-based key information extraction (KIE) framework to extract cross-country, project-level variables by processing World Bank REDD+ project documents. We then assess the effectiveness of gender-inclusion strategies—including design-stage and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) stage—on project performance using a Bayesian linear mixed model. Our findings highlight that gender inclusion at the design stage does not improve subjective or objective outcomes, whereas M&E stages enhance not only governance processes but also project outcomes. This work demonstrates the capacity of LLMs to support quantitative policy and project evaluation and, for the first time, extends their application to outcome-oriented research on gender inclusion policy.

The research presented in this paper is based on a joint activity of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the World Bank, with the objective to provide a novel 4D building dataset for the Global South that helps to better understand how building area and height have developed since 1985. To produce this dataset – the World Settlement Footprint 4D (WSF® 4D) –, information from various state-of-the-art global geo-data collections on building footprints, building height, and spatial expansion of the built-up area are combined. The WSF® 4D offers scientists, planners, and decision makers novel insights into the settlement growth over four decades in a so far unprecedented spatiotemporal detail and coverage. This work therefore contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex patterns of global urbanization and its drivers and impacts.

Locally determined patterns of urbanization and spatial development are key factors to the exposure and vulnerability of people to climatic shocks. Using high-resolution annual data, this study shows that, since 1985, human settlements around the world—from villages to megacities—have expanded continuously and rapidly into present-day flood zones. In many regions, growth in the most hazardous flood zones is outpacing growth in non-exposed zones by a large margin, particularly in East Asia, where high-hazard settlements have expanded 60% faster than flood-safe settlements. These results provide systematic evidence of a divergence in the exposure of countries to flood hazards. Instead of adapting their exposure, many countries continue to actively amplify their exposure to increasingly frequent climatic shocks.

The 21st-century global urbanization wave manifests as metropolization, where urban centers, sub-centers, and peripheral functional zones collectively form highly aggregated forms of regional growth poles—metropolitan areas that aggregate resources and drive development. However, metropolitan areas delineation has persistently lacked a data-driven framework reconciling regional heterogeneity and global applicability. Leveraging multi‑source, multi‑modal datasets, this study first constructs a worldwide “natural‑humanistic base‑zone” map with spatially‑constrained clustering. Within each base‑zone, principal‑component analysis generates a Centrality Index and a Radiation Index to capture central area and radiant area in metropolitan, and change point model identifies the metropolitan area realistic boundary and hierarchical urban-rural gradient structure. Explainable machine learning model Light-GBM with SHAP is applied into revealing the relationship between metropolitan areas’ features and blue-green morphology. This study will offer innovative insights to enhance understanding global metropolitan areas from the “Anthropo-geosphere” viewpoint, holding scientific significance for achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals and fostering human-nature harmony.

This paper examines the process of acquiring agricultural concessions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and highlights the limitations of the current legal framework. While the procedure formally respects legal and customary requirements, most concessionaires stop at the provisional occupation contract, which is easier to obtain than the definitive one. The latter demands actual land development, which is rarely pursued. As a result, provisional contracts often exceed their legal time limits without transitioning to definitive status, leading to underutilized land. Meanwhile, land value increases, benefiting holders without promoting agricultural productivity. Although the land code provides tenure security, it fails to incentivize effective land use. This paper argues that additional policy tools and incentives are needed to ensure that concessions contribute meaningfully to agricultural development, especially in light of the ongoing land reform efforts by the Congolese government.

This article clarifies the land status of agricultural concessions of Mont-Ngafula, in Kinshasa. This area is particular given that it has a hybrid land status which is both urban and rural. This therefore entails the application of the two land tenure systems depending on whether the area concerned is urban or rural. The results of this analysis highlights that since the enactment of the 1973 Land Act, access to agricultural land in this region rarely comply with legal procedure; most land occupants rather transact with various individuals who have customary rights over lands (traditional chiefs and customary landowners) instead meeting the competent services.

Corporate exit has received far less attention than acquisition or operation in debates on responsible land-based investment. Yet as projects close, downsize, or are abandoned, the question of who (re)gains control over land and on what terms becomes a critical governance challenge. This paper frames corporate exit as an emerging frontier of land governance and introduces land return as a practice whereby companies transfer land and assets back to communities. Drawing on three recent cases in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Nicaragua involving private agribusiness and forestry companies, the paper analyses how land return was negotiated and implemented within different legal and institutional systems. The findings show that land return required governance innovation: legal interpretation, participatory processes, and facilitation that bridged gaps in law and policy. Across contexts, land return emerged as a potential mechanism for restoring rights, rebuilding legitimacy, and opening space for more accountable and inclusive forms of land governance.

This study addresses the critical challenge of accurately valuing economic trees and cash crops for compensation during land acquisition in Nigeria by reviewing and updating the 2008 National Technical Development Forum (NTDF) compensation rates. Traditional valuation methods are often inadequate, relying on outdated statutory rates that result in inconsistent and unfair compensation. This study assesses the newly developed harmonised NTDF 2024 compensation rates, formulated under the coordination of the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development with support from the World Bank and Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP). Using a multi-stage empirical methodology that incorporates extensive stakeholder engagement and a standardised data collection template across Nigerian states, the study examines key variables such as species-specific yields, production costs, and market dynamics. A price monitoring model was adapted to include macroeconomic factors (inflation and exchange rate fluctuations), to determine prices for crops and economic trees in real-time.

Large-scale land transactions (LSLTs) have expanded rapidly across developing countries. We combine two analyses to study the medium-run effects of LSLTs in Ethiopia. First, we leverage the plausibly exogenous timing of LSLT entry to estimate the effects on local economic and environmental outcomes. Second, we conduct an original survey of households in Gambela region including detailed questions on households’ interactions with LSLTs to shed light on mechanisms. We find modest effects on crop productivity at the national level with no effect on deforestation, and significant reductions in burned area. In Gambela, we also find that LSLTs reduced deforestation and increased tree cover. We observe a 13.7% increase in log wage income for every 1,000 ha of LSLT within 5–10 km. In contrast,households within 0–5 km show no significant benefits. This is consistent with modest positive equilibrium effects that at least partially offset damages to the most exposed households.

This study analyses how land tenure systems constrain the productivity of women smallholder cocoa farmers in the Suhum Cocoa District. Using a mixed-methods approach, it combines interviews with land officials and leaders of the Asetenapa Co-operative Cocoa Farming and Marketing Union Limited with survey data from 100 women farmers. Findings show that customary tenure, under the authority of the Ofori Panin Stool, dominates land access. Over 90% of women do not own the land they farm and depend largely on sharecropping and tenancy arrangements, with limited inheritance-based access. These conditions create tenure insecurity and restrict women’s ability to invest, expand production, and participate in commercial farming. The study calls for gender-responsive land and agricultural policies, improved access to finance, and targeted institutional support through the Ghana Cocoa Board to strengthen women’s land rights and productivity.

This article examines the complexity of land ownership in rural Albania, focusing on the historical evolution of agrarian reforms, changes in the rural landscape, and the persistent challenges farmers face without formal property titles. Using a multidisciplinary approach that combines social sciences, political economy, history, and cultural heritage, it analyses both the legal framework and local perceptions of land. Based on empirical research in two Albanian villages, the study explores how agrarian reforms have shaped agriculture and rural life, raising a central question: in Albania, owning land does not always mean being its rightful owner—so what does ownership truly mean? To clarify this, the article applies the Roman legal principles of usus, fructus, and abusus to understand “de jure” rights and contrasts them with their “de facto” application in everyday practice, offering insights relevant to Albania’s path toward EU accession.

This study examines the impact of secure housing and tenure security by exploring changes in women’s knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding secure housing, property ownership, and financial decision-making in Kailali and Kanchanpur districts in Nepal. Using a mixed-methods design, the research surveyed 366 respondents, 183 project beneficiaries (Treatment Group) and 183 non-beneficiaries (Control Group). To triangulate the findings key informant interviews and 2 focus group discussions with local officials and community members were also conducted. Findings indicate that project beneficiaries demonstrate substantially higher awareness of secure housing and tenure security, stronger support for joint ownership, and greater recognition of property ownership as a pathway to income generation, financial independence, and increased household decision-making power. Project beneficiary women also show higher rates of property ownership and more consistent involvement in household financial and property-related decisions. The interventions appear to contribute positively to enhancing women’s agency, security, and economic participation.

Digital tools to overcome agricultural land market frictions: A hands-on demonstration

platform for organizing smallholder voluntary land swaps

Using panel data from Indonesian, I document that workers switch from agriculture to non-agriculture within rural areas, rather than through migration to urban areas, suggesting that rural-urban migration is not central to structural change. Yet, rural-urban migration places future cohorts of workers in cities, where access to education and non-agricultural demand are higher, thereby contributing to future structural change. I build an overlapping generations model in which workers choose their sector and location of work considering that switching sectors or locations is costly and that locations differ in their access to education. I find that rural-urban migration has limited effects on structural change, as the rural non-agricultural sector is able to absorb most workers leaving agriculture. I also uncover that sectoral switching costs explain most of the variation in the agricultural share across cohorts. Together, these findings imply that frictions limiting migration are not the main barrier to structural change.

This paper uses a unique household panel dataset with plot-level information on soil fertility and land investments to analyze the relationship between land rental, soil health, and farmers’ soil investment decisions in China. The identification strategy exploits within-household comparisons between owned and rented plots cultivated in the same year, using two survey waves. The results show that rented land has slightly poorer soil quality than owned land. Farmers are also less likely to adopt soil conservation practices, such as deep tillage and organic fertilizer application, on rented plots. However, written rental contracts and contracts registered with official institutions mitigate these differences in soil investments between rented and owned land. These findings suggest that promoting the formalization of farmland rental markets could improve soil quality and encourage sustainable agricultural practices.

This project investigates how the spatial allocation of environmental enforcement resources shapes deforestation. We study a reform of the Brazilian environmental agency that closed nearly half of its local offices. Combining rich data on the environmental agency organization, its enforcement activities, and land cover, we leverage regional variation in geographic exposure to the closures for a difference-in-differences design. We investigate the impact on enforcement and deforestation. To understand how presence on the ground interacts with remote monitoring capacity, we leverage variation in the type of environmental offense and on whether deforestation event were flagged by satellite alerts.

Combining administrative data on credit, mortgages, and construction in Rwanda, this paper shows that technology helps overcome imperfections in property rights and foster the development of the mortgage market. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in 3G internet coverage and a land title reform, we find that mobile connectivity shifts borrowers from microfinance to banks. 3G internet facilitates the distribution of land titles, which borrowers use as collateral for bank loans and mortgages, thus promoting household investment in real estate. A mediation analysis and structural estimation reveal that the property rights channel accounts for 30–37% of the effect of mobile internet on bank lending and 75–80% of the effect on collateralized loans.

Land grabbing in the Colombian Amazon is intricately linked to historical patterns of territorial control and ongoing landscape transformation. Land use change connected with deforestation, conversion to pastures and ultimately land grabbing behaves differently according to historical, social and ecological context. For that purpose, using deforested patches between 2020 and 2021 and the 26 variables related to environmental social, economic, and armed conflict conditions in the Northwestern Arc of the Colombian Amazon, 5 areas were classified using the unsupervised classification algorithm "K-means". In each zone, the similarity between the average values of the variables associated with the patches and their geographic proximity allows for quantitative outputs and geographic representation and facilitates analyzing forest cover loss and local conditions to demonstrate land grabbing in relation to the conversion to pastures and deforestation.

This article analyzes the integration between Brazil’s Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) and the Land Management System (SIGEF) in the Legal Amazon. Employing geospatial similarity (Jaccard Index) and ownership checks using taxpayer identifiers (CPF and CNPJ), it assesses how interoperability can reduce boundary inconsistencies and duplicate records, thus improving environmental enforcement and land governance. The September 2025 national CAR–SIGEF assessment covers nine Legal Amazon states, revealing that 31.57% of CAR registrations are spatially linked to SIGEF parcels, and 91.65% of SIGEF parcels are referenced by a CAR record. The article discusses recent federal initiatives such as the Pre-Filled CAR, PRONAF for Land Regularization, and the Meu Imóvel Rural platform. Recommendations include institutionalizing interoperability standards, increasing support for small producers and traditional communities, and strengthening ongoing validation and monitoring to enhance the integrity and efficiency of land management in the region.

How can weak bureaucracies implement policies? I investigate Brazil’s underresourced land agency as it attempts to formalize property rights for smallholders and traditional communities in Amazonia—a necessary step for sustainable development and halting deforestation. A comparison of neighboring jurisdictions with divergent outcomes reveals counterintuitive conditions under which underresourced organizations can nonetheless function effectively. Ethnography and process tracing show that empowered but fragmented civil society organizations and clashing elites polarized bureaucrats and eroded organizational capacity in one jurisdiction. Conversely, a weak civil society and uninterested elites provided de facto autonomy, enabling moderately partisan bureaucrats to collaborate with clients. Protests and litigation were insufficient to implement policies, while cooperative labor by clients facilitated legibility. Employing a relational political economy approach to analyze state performance, the paper argues that underresourced bureaucracies require shelter from, rather than active support by, elites to operate effectively.

Does industrial activity lead to deforestation and land degradation? Can limited state capacity be overcome to decouple economic activity from environmental degradation? We study these questions in the context of slaughterhouse plant openings in Brazil. Using difference-in-differences, we show that opening a plant increases livestock production while reducing forest cover and degrading pastureland. However, after the introduction of legally-enforceable commitments between slaughterhouses and federal prosecutors that penalize plants for buying livestock from illegally deforested areas, opening a plant leads to higher productivity without increasing deforestation. Our results suggest that incentive-compatible commitments can generate positive economic and environmental outcomes.

The Brazilian Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) is vital for monitoring compliance, but its declaratory nature allows for polygon rectifications that may conceal environmental liabilities. This study develops a spatio-temporal framework to analyze 27,014 properties in the Legal Amazon that underwent boundary modifications. By integrating CAR data with PRODES/INPE deforestation records, embargo databases, and SIGEF land registries, the research identifies patterns of liability evasion. Results reveal significant spatial transformations, including a 50% median area reduction and an 11 km average centroid displacement. A strong correlation exists between rectifications and environmental infractions. Furthermore, findings indicate systematic reclassification of property sizes to influence regulatory thresholds and credit access. Integration with SIGEF distinguishes legitimate corrections from strategic manipulations. These findings highlight critical challenges for CAR’s integrity, emphasizing the need for robust cross-database validation to strengthen environmental governance, financial regulation, and supply chain monitoring in emerging economies.

This research addresses the lack of a standardized, scalable methodology for defining and assessing Land Tenure-Related Risks. Understanding this type of risk can be beneficial for more sustainable and transparent global commodity supply chains, often being linked to Human Rights violations and potential conflict, which can affect corporate reputation and production continuity. The proposed methodology employs a multi-phase approach using a systematic literature review and sophisticated GIS analysis. It presents Land Tenure-Related Risk as an integrated function of three core components: Geospatial certainty, Tenure Recognition/Legal Status, and Compliance with Land-Use Regulations. This conceptual model is applied to Brazil due to its complexity and importance as a commodity exporter. The case study integrates at least 14 distinct, publicly available official datasets within a PostgreSQL spatial database. The results are expected to serve as a vital due diligence tool for companies, an enforcement guide for public administration, and a monitoring instrument for civil society.

This paper explores the historical origins and evolution of land grabbing in Kenya, tracing its roots to the colonial era when policies promoting European settlement disrupted indigenous land tenure systems. These dynamics persisted after independence, enabling widespread illegal and irregular allocations of public land. The executive, particularly the President, became the central custodian of public land, inheriting broad discretionary powers that often-facilitated land grabbing. The National Land Policy and the Constitution of Kenya recognize land grabbing as a historical injustice requiring urgent redress. Using a systematic literature review and case studies, this study highlights the enduring governance gaps that sustain the problem. Situating Kenya’s experience within global trends of large-scale land acquisitions by powerful foreign state and private actors, the paper raises concerns about sovereignty, community rights, and sustainable land governance.