NW: Land reforms and land use changes in post-socialist Albania and Romania (I)

Land use generates private goods (i.e., agricultural crops), common-pool goods (i.e., local water quality), and public goods (i.e., species diversity). The research analyzes the effects of postsocialist land reforms on land use in Albania and Romania. It examines the proposition that postsocialist land reforms favor private against common-pool and public goods. The research uses data gained through six in-depth village studies, supervised classification of remote imagery, and a survey of one hundred villages in each country. Data analysis will combine qualitative institutional analysis with spatially explicit econometric modeling to explain the linkages between land reforms, land tenure and land use and quantify the relative importance of various factors influencing land tenure and land use. The research thus hopes to demonstrate an innovative methodology for the study of land use change. It applies the methodology to develop a differentiated concept of land tenure and analyze dynamics of land use in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe. Its findings suggest possibilities for land policy and other rural development interventions to promote sustainable land use in the region.