No abstract

We examine the impact of the 1993 Land Law of Vietnam, which gave households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. We use household surveys before and after the law was passed, together with the considerable variation across provinces in the speed of implementation of the reform, to identify the impact of the law. We find that the additional land rights led to statistically significant increases in the share of total area devoted to long-term crops and in labor devoted to nonfarm activities. However, these changes are not large in magnitude and appear to be driven mainly by the increased security of tenure provided by the law rather than by increased access to credit markets or greater land market participation.

During the past decade, the use of conditional cash transfer programs to increase investment in human capital has generated considerable excitement in both research and policy forums. This article surveys the existing literature, which suggests that most conditional cash transfer programs are used for essentially one of two purposes: restoring efficiency when externalities exist or improving equity by targeting resources to poor households. The programs often meet their stated objectives, but in some instances there is tension between the efficiency and equity objectives. The overall impact of a program depends on the gains and losses associated with each objective. The use of conditional cash transfer programs as a means of combating poverty has increased dramatically in the past decade. Programs such as Progresa (now called Oportunidades) in Mexico, Bolsa Escola (now called Bolsa Familia) in Brazil, and the Red de Proteccion Social in Nicaragua aim to balance the goals of current and future poverty reduction by providing cash to finance immediate consumption and fostering investment in human capital. Several evaluations show that these programs are technically feasible in that the main stated goals of the programs are actually met in practice and are politically acceptable in that successive governments are willing to continue and even expand program coverage. These results have been a source of encouragement for researchers and policymakers in the development community. Some studies suggest, however, that households would behave very differently if given an equivalent amount of cash with no strings attached: Households would consume less of the conditioned-on good and more of other commodities. In western Kenya, for instance, the incidence of malaria decreased when households were given insecticide-treated bednets (Nahlen and others 2003). But when households were asked what they would do if given an equivalent amount of cash, their priorities were different. They would have spent the cash on food and clothing-bednets

We conduct an empirical analysis of the geographic, economic, and social factors that contributed to the spread of civil war in Nepal over the period 1996-2006. This within-country analysis complements existing cross-country studies on the same subject. Using a detailed dataset to track civil war casualties across space and over time, several patterns are documented. Conflict-related deaths are significantly higher in poorer districts and in geographical locations that favor insurgents, such as mountains and forests; a 10 percentage point increase in poverty is associated with 25-27 additional conflict-related deaths. This result is similar to that documented in cross-country studies. In addition, the relationship with poverty and geography is similar for deaths caused by the insurgents and deaths caused by the state. Furthermore, poorer districts are likely to be drawn into the insurgency earlier, consistent with the theory that a lower cost of recruiting rebels is an important factor in starting conflict. On the other hand, geographic factors are not significantly associated with such onset, suggesting that they instead contribute to the intensity of violence only after conflict has started. Finally, in contrast to some cross-country analyses, ethnic and caste polarization, land inequality, and political participation are not significantly associated with violence.

The differences in financial development between advanced and developing countries are pronounced. It has been observed, both theoretically and empirically, that these differences in countries' financial systems are a source of comparative advantage and trade. This paper points out that to the extent a country's financial development is endogenous, it will in turn be influenced by trade. We build a model in which a country's financial development is an equilibrium outcome of the economy's productive structure: in countries with large financially intensive sectors financial systems are more developed. When a wealthy and a poor country open to trade, the financially dependent sectors grow in the wealthy country, and so does the financial system. By contrast, as the financially intensive sectors shrink in the poor country, demand for external finance decreases and the domestic financial system deteriorates. We test our model using data on financial development for a sample of 77 countries. We find that the main predictions of the model are borne out in the data: trade openness is associated with faster financial development in wealthier countries, and with slower financial development in poorer ones.