policies, markets and mechanisms with Johan van Zyl and Johann Kirsten. At the turn of the century, Binswanger and Deininger examine the evolution of the World Bank's land policy, highlighting (i) the desirability of owner-operated family farms, (ii) the need for markets permitting land transfers to more productive users, and (iii) an egalitarian asset distribution. To this, they add the relative cost effectiveness of communal tenure systems, the assessment of titling programms based on efficiency and equity, the potential of land rental markets, the integration of the development of land-sale markets into broader rural development initiatives, the success of decentralized and market-oriented approaches to land reform, and the need for adaptation to local conditions. Rural Finance In a study by Binswanger and Khandker, both argue that the impact of credit expansion on agricultural output in India has been insubstantial, with the programme having a positive return on investment only under very optimistic assumptions. More recently, Binswanger-Mkhize has argued on the subject of weather index-based agricultural insurance that its prospects for upscaling are poor, given that better-off farmers tend to already be insured through income diversification and social networks, whereas poor farmers are too cash constrained to afford the premia for an insurance that will pay out at earliest after harvest. References External links Google Scholar webpage of Hans Binswanger-Mkhize Homepage of Hans Binswanger-Mkhize Development economists Swiss economists Agricultural economists People from Kreuzlingen 1943 births ETH Zurich alumni North Carolina State University alumni Academic staff of Tshwane University of Technology 2017 deaths