Rural Transition In Azerbaijan

The book demonstrates that reform policies_including privatization of land and the shift from collective to individual farming_have a significant impact on agricultural growth, rural incomes, and poverty alleviation. The analysis spans more than 40 years of agricultural and rural development in Azerbaijan, based on country-level statistical data and original farm and household surveys.

In the past fifteen years, most countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have shifted from predominantly collective to more individualized agriculture. These years also have witnessed the largest fall in agricultural production, yields, and rural employment on record, while the deterioration and dissolution of collective and state farms have been accompanied by a significant drop in rural public services. Land Reform and Farm Restructuring provides a structured and comparative review of important aspects of land reform and documents important differences in policies between countries to examine why the reforms have not yet lived up to their potential. It is based on data from farm and household surveys and interviews conducted in 2003 and 2004. Case studies from Bulgaria, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan - countries that have had particular difficulties in land reform, farm restructuring, farm performance, or rural poverty - each highlight a central conundrum about land reform and farm restructuring. The paper concludes with some implications for policy.

Azerbaijan has set the course for the economy to reduce its dependence on oil by promoting new drivers of growth. By 2025, under the government’s Strategic Roads Maps, a more diversified economy should take shape led by three sectors: agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing. Bold reforms need to strengthen areas of the economy that could otherwise impede this transition, and policy makers must resolutely stay on the reform path. The core message of this publication is diversification toward non-oil sources of growth alongside efforts to reduce macroeconomic risks and the high cost of finance, make the education system responsive to the needs of the labor market, close infrastructure gaps, and help economically significant state-owned enterprises become more efficient.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the wheat production developments in the Eurasian region and assesses the potential contribution of the region to domestic and international food security. In particular, the book covers policy and institutional developments of the agricultural sector in Eurasia with a special focus on the horizontal issues relevant to the current and future potential growth of the wheat production, such as land policy, credit and finance, privatization, farm restructuring, and environmental challenges. Global food security is a major societal concern in the light of an increasing population, which is projected to grow from around seven billion today to almost 10 billion in 2050. Two most likely ways to achieve the much needed food production growth are: expansion of land cultivation or increase in crop yields and total factor productivity. The only region with a significant amount of uncultivated arable land that is at the same time experiencing rising agricultural productivity is the “Eurasian wheat belt,” comprising of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian countries (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kirgizstan). This makes the region a potential hotspot for driving the future growth of global agriculture. Such prospects require a detailed investigation of Eurasia’s future perspectives in terms of food production (with a focus on wheat) and its potential contribution to regional and global food security.

Three billion people live in rural areas in developing countries. Conditions for them are worse than for their urban counterparts when measured by almost any development indicator, from extreme poverty, to child mortality and access to electricity and sanitation.

By 1999, Russia's economy was growing at almost 7% per year, and by 2008 reached 11th place in the world GDP rankings. Russia is now the world's second largest producer and exporter of oil, the largest producer and exporter of natural gas, and as a result has the third largest stock of foreign exchange reserves in the world, behind only China and Japan. But while this impressive economic growth has raised the average standard of living and put a number of wealthy Russians on the Forbes billionaires list, it has failed to solve the country's deep economic and social problems inherited from the Soviet times. Russia continues to suffer from a distorted economic structure, with its low labor productivity, heavy reliance on natural resource extraction, low life expectancy, high income inequality, and weak institutions. While a voluminous amount of literature has studied various individual aspects of the Russian economy, in the West there has been no comprehensive and systematic analysis of the socialist legacies, the current state, and future prospects of the Russian economy gathered in one book. The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy fills this gap by offering a broad range of topics written by the best Western and Russian scholars of the Russian economy. While the book's focus is the current state of the Russian economy, the first part of the book also addresses the legacy of the Soviet command economy and offers an analysis of institutional aspects of Russia's economic development over the last decade. The second part covers the most important sectors of the economy. The third part examines the economic challenges created by the gigantic magnitude of regional, geographic, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity of Russia. The fourth part covers various social issues, including health, education, and demographic challenges. It will also examine broad policy challenges, including the tax system, rule of law, as well as corruption and the underground economy. Michael Alexeev and Shlomo Weber provide for the first time in one volume a complete, well-rounded, and essential look at the complex, emerging Russian economy.

The nature of food insecurity in Europe and Central Asia has changed substantially over the past 23 years due to pro-poor economic growth, particularly in the region's less wealthy countries. Today, the main household food insecurity issues concern malnutrition rather than a lack of access to food.

The Population Situation Analysis (PSA) provides the basis for an integrated appraisal of the population and reproductive health dynamics and their impacts on poverty, inequality and development. By integrating a micro and macro analytical approach, the population situation analysis clarifies the interactions between individual behaviour and demographic dynamics. The Population Situation Analysis (PSA) responds to demand by countries that international cooperation should promote national capacity-building and recognize national ownership and leadership as prerequisites for development, in accordance with the principles agreed at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Millennium Declaration. This manual contributes to more efficient evidence-based programming, which relies on increased capacity for data generation, new databases, the consolidation of available evidence and the promotion of the use of hard data. The knowledge generated thr