There are two either explicitly or implicitly and widely accepted ideas about the distribution of land in Ethiopia after the reform of 1975. First, land distribution in rural Ethiopia is highly equitable, for example compared to other African countries where private ownership exists. Second, the land distribution pattern currently observed is basically explained by what happened after the refor...

Empirical evidence from a set of land reform beneficiaries suggests that Zimbabwe’s land reform was successful: the internal rate of return to the land reform project is high, settlers accumulated substantial amounts of assets, and they increased their agricultural productivity substantially over time. This evidence contradicts the general notion that land reform was a failure, a notion support...

This paper explores the effects of different descent rules on human capital accumulation. In a context where parents are constrained in the possibility of passing land on to their children (e.g., because it is considered property of the extended family, or clan), investment in their children’s human capital might not be optimal. We focus on matrilineal inheritance rules and exploit a policy exp...

Redistributive land reform may promote both equity and efficiency. Implementing such reform can be costly, however, and may not be the best way to achieve redistribution. If land redistribution is to be implemented, it should be based on a uniform land ceiling that can be exceeded if landowners are willing to pay a high enough price to do so. Owners of redistributed land should be permitted to ...

Over the last decade, following the doi moi reforms, the Vietnamese government has formally recognised the household as the basic unit of production and allocated land use rights to households. Under the 1993 Land Law these rights can be transferred, exchanged, leased, inherited, and mortgaged. A ‘land market’ is emerging in Vietnam but is still constrained for various reasons. Additionally, la...

Epilepsy holds an almost unique place in English criminal law. It has resulted in two appeals to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, the highest appeal court in the land. This in turn has led to a pair of legal decisions which in many ways have shaped the development of the defence of insanity and its relationship to automatism. This report will provide a unique insight into how the c...

Land and wealth are closely related in rural Brazil, a country characterized by high levels of inequality in terms of income or landholdings. After presenting a historical retrospective of land concentration and land reform in Brazil, this study evaluates the impact of the land reform programme undertaken in the 1990s on land ownership and land distribution. It is shown that the programme incre...

Land reform usually refers to redistribution of land from the rich to the poor. More broadly, it includes regulation of ownership, operation, leasing, sales, and inheritance of land (indeed, the redistribution of land itself requires legal changes). In an agrarian economy like India with great scarcity, and an unequal distribution, of land, coupled with a large mass of the rural population belo...

This paper examines the factors affecting the participation of farm households in farm land rental markets with particular focus on the impact of the land reform. The operational outcomes of such market participation are also analysed. The study used a panel dataset of farm households surveyed before and after the land reform with Random Effect Tobit model. The analysis showed that the land ref...