This paper is a synthesis of land issues and land policy constraints in Southern Africa prepared for the World Bank Regional Workshop on Land Issues in Africa and the Middle East held in Kampala, Uganda, 29 April to 2 May 2002. It synthesizes key points made in commissioned papers, plenary comments, and facilitated discussions from a special Southern Africa Working Group attended by conference ...

A spatial analysis of a large 20th century urban settlement (town/city) easily presents the celebrated central Business District (CBD). Theories of Urban Land Economics have easily justified and attempted to explain the existence of such a district activity area within the cityscape. This work examines the gradual emergence and development of the CBD in Lafia Town, Nigeria over 20 years and the...

This paper presents a conceptual design for an agent-based bilateral residential land market. The design includes interactions between multiple buyers and sellers (household agents, developers, and rural land owners) and two local feedbacks to land value—price expectation formation based on local neighborhoods and spatial externalities. To address the methodological challenges inherent in the t...

Whether called ‘planning’ or ‘zoning’, land markets are regulated in many cities and countries over the world. These interventions ensure the provision of certain amenities but researchers are increasingly becoming aware of the repercussions they have in land and housing markets, as well as in other segments of the economy. This chapter introduces welfare economics – though not an approach wide...

Incentive-based strategies such as conservation easements and short-term management agreements are popular tools for conserving biodiversity on private lands. Billions of dollars are spent by government and private conservation organizations to support land conservation. Although much of conservation biology focuses on reserve design, these methods are often ineffective at optimizing the protec...

Neoclassical economics, the dominant economics paradigm, has influenced and been influenced by developments in regulated industries. We identify major theoretical and empirical accomplishments, discuss the impact ofthese accomplishments onpolicy development, and list the channels through which the impacts are madepossible. We then discuss regulatorypolitics, lack ofresearch perspective, an over...

Agricultural parastatals were a common feature during apartheid and were intended, according to the government, to address poverty in the Bantustans. However the failure of these projects to achieve the publicised goals, mainly due to their heavy dependence on government funding, led to a belief that their establishment was motivated more by politics than the stated reasons. Following a review ...

This paper develops a model to understand the mechanism that might explain how land rights security may facilitate labor specialization. The theoretical framework suggests that with secured land rights, households with high farming ability are likely to invest in land while households with low farming ability tend to investment in human capital and migrate. Land security is identified as whethe...