Savastano, SaraDeininger, KlausXia, Fang2016-11-172016-11-172017-02Food Policy0306-9192https://hdl.handle.net/10986/25368While 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.en-USCC BY 3.0 IGOrural developmentland marketland rightsland tenuregenderexpropriationJournal ArticleWorld Bank10.1596/25368