The IMF presented recently its Fall World Economic Outlook, with the title Globalization and Inequality.
The World Economic Outlook presents the IMF staff's analysis and projections of economic developments at the global level, in major country groups (classified by region, stage of development, etc.), and in many individual countries.
Full text and data available online.
Watch a video of the presentation. We continue our weekly series, as usual from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.
Land Policies and Women
Ownership of land is particularly important for the welfare of women. Traditionally, women have been deprived in this area. Land policy initiatives that were targeted for the household failed to appreciate the positive role that women who have access to assets play in nutrition and human capital accumulation. Asset ownership for females has been shown to affect spending on education for girls especially. Quisumbing and Otsuka (2001) show that the introduction of export crops in Ghana increased the demand for female workers and also resulted in improved spending on education (for girls) and health. Furthermore, it has been shown in some studies that productivity increases when women both control and own the land. Udry (1996) showed that the transfer of plots from men to women in Burkina Faso increased the output by 6 percent. Although Adesina and Djato (1997) found no significant difference between the efficiency of women compared to men for plots in Cote d’Ivoire, in situations where women are the main agricultural cultivators, for example in Africa, Latin America and Asian countries, and men control the proceeds from cultivation, women have less of an incentive to exert efforts, thus agricultural productivity may be lower.
Typically women’s land rights in many developing economies are acquired through their husbands or male relatives. In many societies however, widows have only indirect access to land that is often insecure. Saxena (1999) notes that for India, laws and prevailing practices are often heavily biased against women. The increase in AIDS/HIV and the significantly increased male mortality are forcing adjustments in traditional inheritance patterns, but at a slow pace. Ntozi and Ahibisibwe (1999) examine the changes that have taken place in some African countries. A woman’s right to own land needs to be legally recognized and enforced. Reforming inheritance laws is one avenue and also gender equality in the constitution that supersedes any legal provision is another. Developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa have embraced some of these options but much more needs to be done.
Next Friday: Land Inequality and Rural Poverty Harvard University's Center for International Development is hosting tomorrow and Saturday the annual Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference (NEUDC 2007). An annual conference on Development Economics.
Very interesting, if you are in the area. If not, you can access all the papers that will be presented, at their website.
(Via Dani Rodrik's blog) This World Bank initiative will, through a competitive process, award grants and technical assistance to innovative entrepreneurial projects that are designed by Africans, to support the development of Africa.
Elegible participants to the competition can be individuals or organizations emanating from the Sub-Saharan African diaspora, currently living in Europe and active in Africa. Applicants can be entrepreneurs, private investors, NGOs, civil society organizations, foundations, etc.
The World Bank launched last Friday its annual flagship publication, the World Development Report (WDR). Its title this year: Agriculture for Development.
In the words of the World Bank President Robert Zoellick:
The full report can be downloaded for free. You can also buy a hardcopy.
The very comprehensive WDR08 website also includes a slideshow, policy briefs, graphs and figures, and video and audio presentations. Like every Friday, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.
Unequal Distribution of Land in Poor Countries: Background and Impact
The history of land tenure in many developing countries prevented the evolution of secure tenure for much of the population and especially the rural poor. Property rights were oftentimes imposed by outside forces or local overlords. The objective was to seek surpluses from local smallholder populations and/or force local smallholders into wage labor without promoting opportunities for land ownership. The result was the development of production systems and informal tenure arrangements that generated an unequal distribution of land as well as a large landless population. For example, the production systems in Latin America and Asia resulted in unequal access to land in these regions. Similarly the collective production structures in Eastern Europe stymied rural growth. More than 50 percent of the peri-urban population in Africa and more than 40 percent in Asia live under informal tenure and therefore have highly insecure land rights (WB).
Furthering the exclusion of the poor from land access and ownership has been the failure to establish legitimate institutions dealing with land. Parallel and overlapping institutions have evolved over long periods, often with a poor clarity on how land rights are defined, how ownership and possession are determined and how conflicts pertaining to land are resolved. The absence or low level of standards is particularly apparent when distortions in land ownership overlap with race and ethnicity issues, leading in some extreme cases to the collapse of the state. In many African countries, legal recognition has recently been given to customary tenure although implementation of the laws remains a challenge (WB, 2003).
In many countries, the failure to establish legitimate institutions is due to the fact that the state continues to own a large proportion of usable land. In some cases, the appropriation of rents from land appreciation and controls by government bureaucracies represents a major source of corruption and constrains the development of legitimate business.
Land represents the main physical asset for poor households—in Uganda land constitutes between 50 and 60 percent of the asset endowment of poor households. Securing title to that land is critical for improving welfare, and for facilitating investment and wealth accumulation for current and future generations. As noted by the World Bank (2003), securing title to land is important for a number of reasons:
Failure to generate and promote secure land tenure arrangements has made it difficult to establish inclusive patterns of economic growth and actually retards sustainable long-run economic growth. Securing land title or enforcing property rights affects growth in a number of ways, chiefly by:
Failure to enforce property rights or poorly defined property rights waste time and resources for individuals. When property rights are insecure, defending one’s land becomes a costly endeavor that diverts efforts from other more productive pursuits such as investment. Furthermore, poorly functioning or highly regulated and often corrupt institutions that deal with land policies hinder the development of small enterprise startups and non-farm economic development, by essentially making it more difficult to enter and exit the agricultural sector. Also, in such an environment, access to land is limited and landlords are discouraged from renting out their land for more productive opportunities.
Initial Land Distribution and Economic Growth; Selected Countries Like every Friday, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.
This and upcoming weeks we will be looking at the linkages between land, economic growth, and poverty reduction.
Access to and ownership of land is of critical importance to the lives of the poor and in particular for the rural poor, affecting directly their capacity for moving out of poverty. Owners of land have a greater incentive to make that land more productive and thereby increase their welfare. Land as an asset assumes that it can be exchanged through market and non-market channels. For example, land can be used as collateral to raise funds for further investment thus contributing to economic growth and the reduction of poverty. Non-market channels refer to inheritance and land redistribution by the state.
Land inequality is a serious problem in most developing countries, impeding efforts to increase economic growth and rein in poverty. Under these circumstances, the state can play a critical role in achieving socially-desirable land allocation and utilization, in particular where unequal land distribution has served to keep large sections of the population in poverty.
In examining the issue of land, economic growth and poverty reduction, we will begin by looking at the reasons why land inequality has characterized the developing world and the impact that this has had on economic growth and poverty. Then we will examine in particular the effect of the unequal distribution of land for the rural poor. Land inequality has been shown to impact on three key aspects of economic development —education, institutions and financial development—we will examine the literature behind these aspects. Finally we will look at the role that government can play in bringing about a more equal distribution of land by discussing the role of property rights. We will conclude with an examination of land titling that has become a modern property rights tool and the pluses and negatives associated with such titling.
Next Friday: Unequal Distribution of Land in Poor Countries: Background and Impact The winner will be announced on Monday.
Many candidates out there: Grew Mankiw's favorites are Fama, Feldstein, or Barro. Thompson Scientific's are Helpman, Grossman, Tirole, Wilson or Milgrom. Tylor Cowen would give it to Krueger, Bhagwati and Tullock.
If you have your own favorite, you can bet one dollar on him/her. A charity of your choice will get all the money collected (if you win).
Paul Krugman's grey cat has already won a Nobel, and she was not even a favorite. Will the owner do as much? The World Bank and the IFC recently launched the Doing Business Report 2008, one of their annual flagship publications.
Our colleagues from the PSDBlog blogged about it. From Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.
Gender
Over the study period examined in the exhibit below, the proportion of females in the labor force has increased in East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East North Africa. Globally, the proportion of females in the labor force has increased by 1.5 percentage points between 1980 and 1999. There is a great deal of variation across the regions. The relatively low share in the Middle East North Africa – 27.3 percent in 1999 – compared to the other regions has been linked to the non-enforcement of legislation protecting women’s employment rights and family laws that translate into women being less employable than men. Overriding these factors is the fact that women are more likely to be employed in the informal sector and thus uncounted.
 Source: Betcherman (2001)
Conclusion for Labor, Growth and Poverty Reduction
The labor market represents one of the main conduits through which economic growth can help reduce poverty in developing countries. While labor-friendly economic growth can be useful, especially where labor force growth is particularly high, the accompanying cost is, by definition, and other things being equal, low labor productivity growth. That said, labor force growth rates are particularly high in developing countries and is accompanied in many cases by the ongoing shift from agricultural employment; these would appear to call for either some form of labor friendly growth or for a marked increase in growth itself if an increase in unemployment or a shift to the informal sector is to be avoided. Other notable developing country concerns that need to be addressed include highly unequal wages and marked differences across gender in labor market access.
Next Friday we will start to study the relationship between land, growth and poverty reduction. 
A preliminary draft of Daron Acemoglu's new book Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, is available online at his website. 1,169 pages covering this subject in detail. In his own words "this is a preliminary draft of the book manuscript. The draft certainly contains mistakes. Comments and suggestions for corrections are welcome." (Via New Economist)
We reviewed Acemoglu's previous book a while ago: Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy 
The book Moving Out of Poverty: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives on Mobility was launched today at the World Bank in Washington with a Keynote Address by Charles Tilly, author of one of the chapters.
Edited by Deepa Narayan and Patti Petesch, this book "explores the topic of poor people’s mobility from the perspectives of diverse analytic traditions, country contexts and time horizons. The authors -- leading scholars and development practitioners from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology -- not only critically examine the literature about poverty and mobility from their disciplines, but most contribute new conceptual models and evidence from their own works about how and why some people can escape poverty while many stay trapped."
This book is part of the broader project Moving Out of Poverty, a follow-up to Voices of the Poor. This global study aims to learn retrospectively from men and women who have moved out of poverty over the last decade. The October issue of the International Poverty Centre's journal Poverty in Focus is out.
With the title Does Aid Work? - for the MDGs, it "presents 12 articles summarising some of the most important recent research results and commentaries on the effectiveness of international development cooperation—aid for short—against the background of high-level promises of rapidly increasing aid, including policy conclusions and recommendations for enhancing the impact of aid on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)."
Featured articles: - Effective Aid Requires New Structures, by Roger Riddell |
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