Rural Transition in Azerbaijan

Zvi Lerman is professor and Sir Henry d’Avigdor Goldsmid Chair in AgriculturalEconomics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is author of Agriculture in Transition:Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post-Soviet Countries. David J. Sedik is Chief of the Policy Assistance Branch responsible for the development of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN field program, rendering agricultural policy advice to member countries, and assembling country information in the Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia.

• Chapter 1 IntroductionChapter 2 Chapter 1. Azerbaijan: The Country and the PeopleChapter 3 Chapter 2. Policy and Agricultural Development in AzerbaijanChapter 4 Chapter 3. The Design and Implementation of Land ReformChapter 5 Chapter 4. Outcomes of Reform: Transition to Individual Farming and Sector RecoveryChapter 6 Chapter 5. Outcomes of Reform: Rural Incomes and PovertyChapter 7 Chapter 6. Conclusion: Looking Beyond Agrarian Reform in Azerbaijan

This is a careful, comprehensive and scholarly work which documents the path of agricultural and rural reform in Azerbaijan and persuasively links rural economic performance to policy decisions. Because of the solid economic analysis and the cogent comparisons with other transition economies, it is far more than a study of Azerbaijan. It is a treatise on how policies drive economic performance and how policy differences can explain divergent performance paths in transition economies.