Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper uses a stochastic dynamic programming model to characterize the optimal savings-consumption decisions and the role of livestock inventories as a buffer stock in rural Ethiopia. The results show that relatively land-rich households use accumulation and liquidation of cattle and other animal inventories for partial consumption smoothing, while low-income households appear not to do so. The results highlight the need for improvement in livestock markets, which are often affected by high transaction costs and price risk, and for investigation of other approaches to risk management.

Consumption Smoothing --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory & Research --- Livestock --- Livestock & Animal Husbandry --- Risk --- Rural Development Knowledge and Information Systems --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Savings

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Rwanda's completion, in 2012/13, of a land tenure regularization program covering the entire country allows the use of administrative data to describe initial performance and combine the data with household surveys to quantify to what extent and why subsequent transfers remain informal, and how to address this. In 2014/15, annual volumes of registered sales ranged between 5.6 percent for residential land in Kigali and 0.1 percent for agricultural land in the rest of the country; and USD 2.6 billion worth of mortgages were secured against land and property. Yet, informality of transfers in rural areas remains high. Decentralized service provision and information campaigns help reduce but not eliminate the extent of informality. A strategy to test the efficacy of different approaches to ensure full registration, scale up promising ones, and rigorously monitor the effect of doing so is described.

Communities & Human Settlements --- Land & Real Estate Development --- Private Sector Development --- Rural Development --- Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction --- Urban Development

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper uses Ethiopian data to explore credit rationing in semi-formal credit markets and its effects on farmers' resource allocation and crop productivity. Credit rationing-both voluntarily and involuntarily-is found to be widespread in the sampled rural villages, largely because of risk-related factors. Political and social networks emerge as key determinants of access to credit among smallholder, peasant farmers. Significant regional variation emerges as well. In high-potential, surplus producing areas where credit is largely used for agricultural production, eliminating credit constraints is estimated to increase productivity by roughly 11 percentage points. By contrast, in low-productivity, drought prone areas where loans were rarely used to acquire inputs for crop production, the authors find no relationship between credit rationing and agricultural productivity. To be effective, efforts to improve agricultural productivity not only need to increase credit supply, but also explore the reasons for credit rationing and the availability of productive opportunities.

Access to Finance --- Agriculture --- Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress --- Credit constraints --- Credit rationing --- Crop production --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory & Research --- Financial Intermediation --- Rural Development --- Ethiopia

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Since 2010, Lesotho has implemented legal and institutional changes to allow female land ownership, established a new land agency, reduced the cost of registering land, and carried out systematic urban land titling. Analysis using administrative data shows that these reforms triggered discontinuous and sustained changes in quality of service delivery, female land ownership, and registered land sales and mortgage volume. Land and credit market activation is, however, exclusively due to policy reforms. While (subsidized) systematic land registration allows women to access documented land rights, these effects may not be sustained without further regulatory change, highlighting the importance of reducing fees and streamlining processes to improve urban land and financial market functioning as a key precondition for Africa's expected wave of urbanization translating into productive cities and jobs.

Access To Finance --- Credit Market --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Gender --- Gender and Development --- Gender and Economics --- Housing Finance --- Land Market --- Land Reform --- Municipal Housing and Land --- Poverty --- Urban Development --- Urban Economic Development --- Urban Land Management --- Urban Land Policy --- Urban Poverty

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Despite accounts of increasing large farm penetration in Africa and an active debate on the differential potential of smallholder versus large farms to satisfy Africa's food requirements, evidence on the extent and performance of different farm types remains limited. A census and subsequent representative survey of 3,000 large farms in Zambia, one of the African countries with the highest share of large farms, allows characterizing the impact of institutional arrangements on large farms' establishment and productive performance. While policies rather than exogenous price shocks seem to have driven large farm expansion, average productivity is not different from small farms and title has no impact on productivity, investment, or credit access, most likely because the transferability of titles remains limited, undermining the suitability of such land as collateral. Significant effects of title on self-reported land prices point toward land being acquired for speculative purposes, suggesting that a tax on titled land, together with improved land service delivery might be a desirable policy option.

Access To Finance --- Agricultural Productivity --- Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Communities and Human Settlements --- Land Administration --- Land Investment --- Land Rights --- Land Titling --- Land Use and Policies