1,721,557 research outputs found
First experiences with a high-resolution imagery-based adjudication approach in Ethiopia
No full textGreat progress has been made with rural land certification in Ethiopia. This process, however, has been mainly confined to the first phase certificates – those without a georeference. In 2008, a team conducted a simple field test using high resolution imagery. On-site tests were performed to determine if Quickbird satellite imagery could be used to establish parcel index maps in selected villages. The data collection in the field was performed with the help of land rights holders and local officials. The image quality of the plots at a scale of 1:2000 was sufficiently high to allow the parties to easily understand the images and contribute input, making the process very participatory. Many land rights holders were not able to present their certificates, suggesting updating issues. Even though the test was not well prepared, it yielded useful experiences and data. This limited data set was processed initially with ArcGIS and later with the first prototype of the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM), which is open-source software. Processing the limited graphical display of the boundaries was relatively easy, but trying to link the data to Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates (collected, at the same time, with hand-held GPS) was not immediately possible due to offsets caused by a number of reasons. Nevertheless, the approach seems very useful for lower land value areas where coverage is more important than (absolute) accuracy.Geo-information and Land DevelopmentOTB Research Institut
Smallholders’ land access in Sub-Saharan Africa: A new landscape?
No full textWhile scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non-farm development and transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited. We use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios. While rental markets transfer land to land-poor and labor-rich producers, their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions. Their functioning may also be constrained by ill-defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation, a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner. Methodological and substantive conclusions are derived. (C) 2016 The World Bank. Published by Elsevier Ltd
Rural land markets in transition: evidence from 6 Eastern European countries
No full textWhether agriculture can offer a future to the residents of Eastern European transition
countries and the extent to which land markets can help overcome large differences
between the ownership and the operational distribution of agricultural land are two
issues of considerable interest. We explore characteristics common to households who
want to expand their agricultural operations and use a household model to identify
additional factors that affect households’ ability to access land rental markets. Using
data from Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and the Czech and Slovak Republics
to test these predictions supports the hypothesis that land markets offer considerable
potential to improve productivity but that imperfections in markets for capital goods
and credit will lead to differences in the extent to which these are actually being
realized. Implications for policy, in particular with respect to the scope and limitations
of rental markets, are discussed
Land fragmentation, cropland abandonment, and land market operation in Albania
No full textAlbania’s radical farmland distribution is credited with averting an economic crisis and social unrest during the transition.
But many believe it led to a holding structure too fragmented to be efficient, and that public efforts to consolidate plots are needed to lay
the foundation for greater rural productivity. Farm-level data from the 2005 Albania LSMS allow us to explore this quantitatively. We
find no support for the argument that fragmentation reduces productivity. However, producers fail to utilize about 10% of the country’s
productive land, and this land has, in the majority of cases, been idle for at least 5 years. Farmers quote inefficiently-small plots as the
reason for this in very few cases, casting doubt on the scope for land consolidation to solve this issue. Instead, the data are consistent
with the notion of land market imperfections, which can be traced to gaps in the legal and policy framework, as well as inefficiencies in
registry operations, leading to land abandonment on a large scale. To maintain the productive potential of Albania’s rural economy and,
if and when needed, the ability to conduct consolidation in a cost-effective and sustainable manner, it will be critical to complement the
emphasis on consolidation with an effort to address those gaps and inefficiencies on a priority basis
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Can diaries help in improving agricultural production statistics? Evidence from Uganda
No full textAlthough good and timely information on agricultural production is critical for policy-decisions, the quality of
underlying data is often low and improving data quality could have high payoff. We use data from a
production diary, administered concurrently with a standard household survey in Uganda to analyze the
nature and incidence of responses, the magnitude of differences in reported outcomes, and factors that
systematically affect these. Despite limited central supervision, diaries elicited a strong response,
complemented standard surveys in a number of respects and were less affected by problems of respondent
fatigue than expected. The diary-based estimates of output value consistently exceed that from the recallbased
production survey, in line with reported disposition. Implications for policy and practical
administration of surveys are drawn out
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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