Edward Elgar Publishing Sustainable Development in Asia, America and Europe with Global Applications: A New Approach to Land Ownership

Challenging Nobel economics laureate Theodore W. Schultz, Dr Zhou, in this comparative and path-breaking work, presents a new model for private land ownership or possession to overcome inefficient land-holding, increase farm competitiveness, realize food self-sufficiency and eliminate poverty. He aims to consolidate and enlarge fragmented small farms persisting in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, and Central, Eastern and Southern Europe; and to help preserve small farmers, while strengthening large farmers, in the USA, OECD and EU. He introduces the means to facilitate the transition of collectively operated large farms in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia; promote EU enlargement; to prevent food overproduction; and to improve the environment. He also analyzes China's experience with public land ownership and makes important contributions to both new institutional economics and evolutionary political economy. Review 'The author of this path-breaking book presents an analysis of models of rural development that have proven to be more or less successful. Furthermore, he also elaborates a new model which he believes will be able to overcome the final remaining obstacle preventing sustainable agriculture and rural development in monsoon Asia and other countries. . . The book is full of in-depth observations and analyses. . . It is one of the most important contributions in our time to land-tenure literature and a must for all those working in the field.' -- Frithjof Kuhnen, Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture'This book consists of outstanding analyses and a series of original and ingenious policy proposals of general interests. By integrating land ownership into sustainable rural development, Dr Zhou brought a refreshing new perspective to the topic. Some of the discussions have already been published, but this book gives an overall and complete picture of the author's work.' About the Author Jian-Ming Zhou, Research Fellow in Agricultural Economics, University of Florence, Italy