Impacts of Privatization of Customary Land Rights in Zambia: A Comparative Study of Rural and Peri‐urban Locations

In its quest for development, Zambia is pursuing a land policy that facilitates privatization of customary land. This article investigates the effects of privatization in terms of how it shapes people's behaviour and perception of private tenure and related tenure dynamics. Findings have shown that the appetite to privatize land is growing stronger in peri‐urban areas as land becomes more scarce. Furthermore, privatization of land appears to be a threat to traditional political structures as allegiance and loyalty towards chiefs diminish and tension and struggles over land in peri‐urban areas increase. Similarly, privatization of land erodes people's faith in the role that cultural and ancestral beliefs play in traditional land management. Also, people in rural areas tend to favour private tenure more if ‘privatization of customary land’ means allocation of land to outsiders. If, by contrast, the phrase is taken to mean communities registering their own land, peri‐urban communities tend to have a stronger desire to register land. Furthermore, rural communities were found to be less informed about land policy and seemed less keen to be involved in land policy processes when compared to peri‐urban residents. However, rural people may have no reason to inform themselves about land policy until they realise that the policy is likely to affect them.     

Determinants of Anti‐Trafficking Policies: Evidence from a New Index

We develop an index measuring the three main dimensions – prosecution, protection, and prevention – of the anti‐trafficking policies of the governments of up to 180 countries over the 2000?2010 period. Overall, developed countries perform better than the rest of the world; compliance with prosecution policy is highest, while governmental efforts to protect victims of human trafficking remain weakest. We employ the new indices to investigate which factors determine anti‐trafficking policies. We find that compliance with anti‐trafficking policies significantly decreases with corruption and is higher in countries that also respect the rights of women. We also find some tentative evidence for spatial dependence in anti‐trafficking policies.     

Economic development and farmland protection: An assessment of rewarded land conversion quotas trading in Zhejiang,China

Facing a substantial loss of farmland in the reform era, the Chinese central government established a highly centralized land management system in 1998 to guarantee its capacity to meet the domestic food needs. In order to maintain high-speed economic growth, local governments in China made great efforts to circumvent the stringent constraint on land use by launching various innovative land management schemes, among which Zhejiang's rewarded land conversion quotas (RLCQ) trading scheme, a program similar to the transfer of development rights (TDR) in Western countries, has attracted a lot of policy and scholarly attention. In this research, we first provide an overview of China's farmland protection policy and the RLCQ trading scheme in Zhejiang Province. Then, using the system GMM estimator for economic growth models and a panel dataset of 69 local jurisdictions in Zhejiang Province covering the period of 1989–2008, we assess the impacts of RLCQ trading on local economic growth. The empirical results corroborate our hypotheses that participation in land quota trading in general led to faster local economic growth, and that the trading had a stronger and more lasting impact on the economic growth of the quota buyers than on that of the sellers. The analysis suggests that in order to balance the competing goals of economic development and farmland protection, market-based land management tools have a good potential for further development in China and other countries confronting similar challenges.     

The Effects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief on the Economies and Domestic Politics of Focus Countries

President G.W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been rated as one of the successful US aid interventions of recent decades. We investigate the impact of PEPFAR on economic development, democracy, and human rights by comparing focus countries that received PEPFAR with other countries that did not receive PEPFAR from 2003 to 2008. Moreover, we examine specific changes made within focus countries after the implementation of PEPFAR using Difference-in-Difference estimation. Our results show that PEPFAR did improve economic conditions in focus countries but had a limited impact on political conditions, that is, on democracy and human rights.     

Property rights in conflict: wild berry-picking and the Nordic tradition of allemansrätt

Wild berries became a valuable export article in Sweden and Finland at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time, property rights over wild berries were not explicitly defined, and in both countries, proposals were made to subject the berries to the landowner. The proposals did not pass and wild berry-picking on another's land continued, as seen from today's perspective, to be available to everyone. This paper looks at the socioeconomic context of wild berry-picking, and asks whether the principle of allemansrätt – a Nordic tradition of public access to nature – played a role in why wild berries did not become private property. By focusing on the Finnish penal code debate of 1888 and the process of stabilising the property rights, the paper rejects the idea of continuity. It argues that (1) the traditional allemansrätt is debatable as a historical concept and shows how (2) the contingent political process created the conditions, and economic imagination the impetus, that wild berries were not privatised but turned into an open resource.     

Compulsory purchase for biodiversity conservation in the Netherlands

Policy instruments are the building blocks of land use policies. Instrumentation of policies relates to values. Compulsory purchase is a direct government instrument that may be an effective way to implement policies of biodiversity conservation and the allocation of land for recreational use. It is, however, in many contexts, politically controversial. The Netherlands’ Government has endorsed policies that involve compulsory purchase in up to 10% of land purchases. This paper reviews if this 10%-ceiling can structure relationships between landowners and government agencies in such a way that it relieves constraints imposed by land availability for biodiversity conservation and the provision of recreational areas. The analysis consists of (1) the background of this 10%-ceiling, (2) the actual procedures of compulsory purchase, by analysis of Royal Decrees, (3) the actual compulsory purchases, and (4) the indirect instrumental effects of the use of this instrument. The paper concludes that the 10%-ceiling does not lift the constraints of land availability, but does influence the relationship between stakeholders, the implementation of biodiversity objectives, and land policy strategies. Nevertheless, compulsory purchase may provide possibilities to acquire land necessary for a consolidated natural area.     

Employees who do not know their labour contract term and the implications for working conditions: Evidence from Japanese and Spanish microdata

In this paper, we analyse the relationship between employees who do not know the length of their labour contract (hereafter, DNK employees) and working conditions. In developed countries, labour standards regulations generally require employers to provide a labour contract with a clearly defined duration to protect the fundamental rights of workers. However, the data reveal that in the developed countries on which we focus, Japan and Spain, non-negligible proportions of employees, 8% and 11%, respectively, do not know the duration of their labour contracts. Utilizing 2012 data from the Employment Status Survey for Japan and the Economically Active Population Survey for Spain, we find that whether workers are ignorant of their contract term commonly depends on their human capital level. Women, single people, younger and older workers and less-educated workers are more likely not to know their labour contract duration. Compared with other employees, DNK employees are more dissatisfied with their current job, more likely to search for other jobs and less likely to seek more work in their current jobs. We find that DNK employees suffer from a wage penalty for non-standard status and have less access to job training, as occurs in Japan, and that specific attributes, such as immigrant status, tend to be closely related to DNK status, as occurs in Spain. Overall, DNK employment is related to poor working conditions, which indicates the importance of educating workers about labour laws to maintain the welfare of disadvantaged workers.     

Toponymy as Commodity: Exploring the Economic Dimensions of Urban Place Names

In recent years the study of urban toponymy (place names) has been revitalized by the emergence of a ‘critical toponymies' approach. This focuses on the cultural politics of place naming and the decisions involved in attributing names to the urban landscape. However, in contemporary cities place names have an economic role in addition to their political role. In particular, there have been recent calls for more attention to the commodification of place‐naming rights and practices. This article seeks to respond to these calls by addressing the issue of urban place names as commodities. It begins by examining the naming of sports stadia by corporate sponsors. It then considers a range of ways in which private‐sector interests are increasingly influencing the naming of the urban landscape, from buildings and neighbourhoods to individual streets. Even the material signage that identifies street names can be appropriated within branding and promotional strategies. Moreover, urban place names are increasingly incorporated into a range of commercially produced spatial datasets collated by private companies. The article ends by proposing a number of directions for future research into the economic role of urban place names and the commodification of toponymy more broadly.