land tenure security and investment does strength of land right really matter in rural burkina faso abstract the causal relationship between land tenure security and agricultural investment plays a crucial role in the process of rural development land property rights are key determinants for reducing poverty through agricultural productivity natural resource management and socio economic inequalities growing competition for land access increases the sensitivity in land socio economic stakes and related policies in developing countries this paper analyzes the impacts of land rights on land related investment in rural burkina faso we use rural representative panel data and appropriate methods the two stage conditional maximum likelihood approach is used for dealing with endogeneity while the generalized structural equation model allows us to control for random effects we show that stronger land rights increase land attached investment and land investment has positive and negative effect on stronger and weaker land rights respectively in rural burkina faso our study also finds that women and immigrants have less land rights than men and natives respectively our contribution to related literature includes the use of rigorous process of hierarchy in land rights the close link of the results with land right strength is of great interest for cautious practitioners in land tenure and investment moreover our results imply that a gain of efficiency can be achieved from combining practices in land tenure and investment

crop prices and the demand for titled land evidence from uganda abstract i investigate how agricultural prices affect demand for titled land using panel data on ugandan farmers and a price index that weighs international crop prices by the structure of land use at the sub county level higher prices increase farmers share of titled land i also present evidence of a positive impact of prices on agricultural incomes the effect of prices on land tenure is stronger when farmers have access to roads and markets when they have undertaken investment on the land and when households fear land grabbing

do overlapping property rights reduce agricultural investment evidence from uganda the need for land related investment to ensure sustainable land management and increase productivity of land use is widely recognized however there is little rigorous evidence on the effects of property rights for increasing agricultural productivity and contributing toward poverty reduction in africa whether and by how much overlapping property rights reduce investment incentives and the scope for policies to counter such disincentives are thus important policy issues using information on parcels under ownership and usufruct by the same household from a nationally representative survey in uganda the authors find significant disincentives associated with overlapping property rights on short and long term investments the paper combines this result with information on crop productivity to obtain a rough estimate of the magnitudes involved the authors make suggestions on ways to eliminate such inefficiencies

partial land rights and agricultural outcomes evidence from thailand to disentangle the issue concerning which dimensions of land rights among security tradability and pledgeability affect agricultural outcomes this paper exploits a unique partial land rights entitlement program in thailand that guarantees only security allows a limited access to credit and prohibits any land sale based on an instrumental variables strategy i find that the entitlement increases 1 second rice but not major rice productivity 2 land use intensity and 3 land related investment and leads to 4 better soil quality this suggests that the security dimension alone can play an important role in improving farm activities

inter generational effects of titling programmes physical vs human capital abstractprogrammes aimed at giving legal ownership titles to the occupants of land titling programmes are associated with an income or wealth effect that induce higher expenditure on normal goods like education and health services there is also a substitution effect the elimination of expropriation risk makes home investment more attractive and increases the opportunity cost of other forms of spending the net effect on human capital is ambiguous using data from a natural experiment in uruguay we find that titling favours home investment to the detriment of some dimensions of human capital investment for children of 16 and under

migration and income diversification evidence from burkina faso this paper uses limited dependent variable methods and new data from burkina faso to test the impact of inter continental and continental migration on activity choice and incomes in rural households econometric evidence supports our theoretical expectation that the impact of emigration varies both by migrant destination and production activity we find no evidence of either positive or negative effects of continental migration on agricultural or livestock activities and only a small negative impact on non farm activities however inter continental migration which tends to be long term and generates significantly larger remittances stimulates livestock production while being negatively associated with both staple and non farm activities

estimating the impact of rural investments in nepal abstract as a largely rural society most people in nepal still depend upon agriculture as their major livelihood strategy therefore it is important to improve the allocation efficiency of limited public expenditures to promote agricultural growth and poverty reduction however evaluating the returns of public investment is limited by methodological challenges we use hedonic and panel data methods to examine the returns to different types of rural public investments including roads irrigation and extension advice the use of diverse identification strategies reduces the risk of using a narrower set of results driven primarily by a particular methodology we find that rural roads and irrigation are one of the most productive public expenditures according to the benefit cost ratio calculations though the magnitudes of these ratios depend on methodology

environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa pilot evidence from rwanda although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in african land tenure few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated the case of rwanda s nation wide and relatively low cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest this paper evaluates the short term impact some 2 5 years after completion of the pilots undertaken to fine tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects three key findings emerge from the analysis first the program improved land access for legally married women about 76 percent of married couples and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias second the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures this effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce third land market activity declined allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people implications for program design and policy are discussed

the case for nil votes voter behavior under asymmetric information in compulsory and voluntary voting systems in an informational voting environment we study the impact of an explicit nil vote option on the ballot when some voters are uninformed and face the swing voters curse we postulate a simple model of strategic voting in which voters entertain heterogeneous thresholds on legitimacy of different voting actions we predict that introducing a nil vote option reduces the number of uninformed and invalid votes increasing expected welfare in both voluntary and compulsory voting we test our model in a pen and paper laboratory experiment and find that the predictions of the model hold in the data for both voting systems

investment and equity effects of land regularisation the case of nicaragua we use data from nicaragua to examine the impact of award of registered and non registered title on land values and changes in land attached investment registration acquisition through purchase and agrarian reform title all are associated with significant increases in the value of plots receipt of registered title is found to increase land values by 30 and at the same time greatly increase the propensity to invest bringing such investment closer to the optimum in line with descriptive statistics indicating great demand for land right regularisation especially from the poor this suggests that titling can have a positive distributional effect at the same time the legal validity and official recognition of the titles issued appears to be of great importance

indigenous land rights in sub saharan africa appropriation security and investment demand abstract we discuss the links between rights appropriation tenure security and investment demand in sub saharan africa common assertions regarding indigenous tenure are 1 a insecurity of tenure leads to suboptimal investment incentives and 2 b appropriation of land rights in the public domain is rent dissipating we argue that land use and investment decisions among african farmers often have two motives productivity and rights appropriation the usual assertions thus seem contradictory we offer a conceptual model to show that indigenous tenure may provide equal or higher investment incentives than private rights and may promote modes of rights appropriation that are productive rather than wasteful

specificity of control the case of mexico s ejido reform abstract an important aspect of property rights is specificity the ability of a third party to enforce rights the empirical literature rarely isolates the effect of specificity because exogenous changes due to land reforms either simultaneously change both control and specificity or exclusively change control we investigate the effect of specificity in the context of the 1992 salinas land reforms in mexico which constitutionally changed individual control rights for all communal landholders but reserved changes to specificity for a subsequent voluntary land certification program we are able to address selection into the program by taking advantage of the peculiarities in the certification process using agricultural production data from before and after the reform we demonstrate that land certification significantly increases agricultural investments but only for investments directly affected by the changes in control we explain the results using a simple model that shows how specificity can better coordinate landholders beliefs about the implementation of changes in control

property rights and natural resource management incentives do transferability and formality matter this article examines how property rights expectations affect resource management incentives it utilizes expected property rights over different timespans and of different strengths corresponding to a investments of different intensities and b farmers sense of security regarding their often de facto property rights the results suggest that property rights and their alienability in ten year time matter to intensive infrastructural investments although not to lighter investments formality of property rights is shown to be insignificant to investment incentives indicating that there is no functional difference between formal rights and customary rights at present in indigenous communities of the philippines copyright 2008 oxford university press

tenure security investment and productivity in gambian agriculture a generalized probit analysis the determinants of investment input use and productivity are investigated under customary tenure in peri urban areas of the gambia a structural model is specified to investigate the role of tenure security on farm investments and input use and thereby on yield testing of the structural form hypotheses requires simultaneous equation estimation containing both continuous and discrete endogenous variables the model is estimated as a feasible generalized least squares amemiya s generalized probit some of the positive relationships hypothesized between tenure security investment and yields are corroborated in particular tenure security is found to enhance long term investments which in turn enhance yields

property rights productivity and common property resources insights from rural cambodia summary this paper uses data from the 2003 04 cambodia household socioeconomic survey to investigate the effects of property rights to land plots held with a paper documenting ownership in rural cambodia are found to have higher productivity and land values than other plots while property rights have weak effects on access to credit the paper also investigates whether the introduction of private property rights leads to decreased availability of common property resources the data offers only weak support for this hypothesis the general insight is that policies to strengthen land property rights can have important positive effects on the rural economy even in an environment of low state capacity

forest tenure reform in china a choice experiment on farmers property rights preferences decentralization experiments are currently underway in the chinese forestry sector however researchers and policy makers tend to ignore a key question what do forest farmers really want from reform this paper addresses this question using a survey based choice experiment to investigate farmers preferences for various property rights attributes of a forestland contract we found that farmers are highly concerned with the types of rights provided by a contract reducing perceived risks of contract termination and introducing a priority right for the renewal of an existing contract significantly increases farmers marginal willingness to pay for a forest contract

land tenure and property rights theory and implications for development policy this article explores the nature of property rights systems their evolution and their effect on resource allocation it is argued that certain institutional arrangements for land rights have evolved in order to reduce uncertainty and increase efficiency in credit as well as in land markets of particular relevance to developing countries the article emphasizes the contribution of public sector infrastructure to effective land rights systems an appendix to the article presents a formal model analyzing the effects of security of land rights on land prices the intensity of cultivation and the use of credit empirical evidence from thailand supports several of the propositions derived from the model

do land markets improve land use efficiency evidence from jiangsu china inefficient use of scarce and fragmented land challenges the sustainability of agriculture land markets may improve land use efficiency in recent years china has employed various instruments to

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

the productivity impacts of formal and informal land rights evidence from madagascar this paper studies the relationship between land rights and agricultural productivity whereas previous studies used proxies for soil quality and instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of land titles the data used here include precise soil quality measurements which in principle allow controlling for the unobserved heterogeneity between plots empirical results suggest that formal land rights i e land titles have no impact on productivity but that informal land rights i e landowners subjective perceptions of what they can and cannot do with their plots have heterogeneous impacts on productivity

tenure insecurity and investment in soil conservation evidence from malawi tenure insecurity can have important consequences for the conservation of natural resources this paper focuses on two main sources of tenure insecurity informal short term tenancy contracts and customary gender biased inheritance practices using a large plot level dataset from malawi the analysis employs a linear probability model with household fixed effects and finds that both sources of insecurity have a negative effect on soil conservation investments these findings suggest that future land reforms should deal with the informality of the land rental market and address the gap between users and owners of land created by existing customary practices

land property rights and resource allocation abstractin this paper we review the most significant empirical literature on the causal effects of land property rights the literature indicates that secure property rights boost investment in both rural and urban areas these effects however do not appear to be the result of improved credit conditions in rural areas clear land rights also lead to increases in productivity and farm earnings in contrast for urban areas the evidence for an effect on earnings is mixed we find little empirical evidence to suggest that land titling programs enhance the development of land markets finally some evidence suggests that land titling induces changes in household structure that foster human capital accumulation and may help to increase the incomes of future generations

property rights for the poor effects of land titling secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development the evaluation of the causal effects of property rights however is a difficult task as their allocation is typically endogenous to overcome this identification problem we exploit a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles in 1981 squatters occupied a piece of land in a poor suburban area of buenos aires in 1984 a law was passed expropriating the former owners land to entitle the occupants some original owners accepted the government compensation while others disputed the compensation payment in the slow argentine courts these different decisions by the former owners generated an exogenous allocation of property rights across squatters using data from two surveys performed in 2003 and 2007 we find that entitled families substantially increased housing investment reduced household size and enhanced the education of their children relative to the control group these effects however did not take place through improvements in access to credit our results suggest that land titling can be an important tool for poverty reduction albeit not through the shortcut of credit access but through the slow channel of increased physical and human capital investment which should help to reduce poverty in future generations

the demand for tenure security in developing countries abstract we use survey data for manila the philippines to estimate hedonic functions for formal and squatter housing values we show that on average a rented squatter unit in manila would rent for 15 percent more if it were a formal sector unit an owned squatter unit would sell for 25 percent more if it were a formal sector unit these percentages are interpreted as eviction risk discount for squatter dwellings we conclude that assistance projects that provide secure tenure over a wide area will bestow comparatively greater benefits on lower income households and to those in newer less established settlements since the risks that they bear initially are greater

land tenure security and investment incentives puzzling evidence from burkina faso abstract the commonsense logic associating higher land security and higher incentives to invest has been recently called into question in the case of african agriculture to be meaningful empirical tests have to be carefully designed so as to take account of the possible endogeneity of the land rights variable this is done in this paper by applying suitable econometric methods to the original data collected in burkina faso the results obtained cast doubt on the existence of a systematic influence of land tenure security on investment by reviewing the justifications for scepticism in the recent literature we are able to conclude that the traditional village order where it exists provides the basic land rights required to stimulate small scale investment

debt poverty and resource management in a rural smallholder economy this paper develops a model to capture the key features of poverty credit constraints and resource management faced by poor rural households we assume that due to the existence of asymmetric information and moral hazard the household faces an increasing cost of credit as its debt equity ratio rises a household exploiting a natural resource may fall into a poverty trap but only if it is unable to afford the increasing borrowing costs implied by increasing debt to allow it to avoid such a trap or if it discounts future utility so much that a balanced growth path cannot be financed at any level of long run borrowing in contrast along an optimal balanced growth path the household s asset wealth purchased inputs resource stock and consumption increase at the same constant rate however over the long run there may be carrying capacity limits that prevent the resource from improving further the household may then direct its savings to accumulating financial assets and eventually under certain conditions may become a net creditor with resource exploitation becoming a less and less important source of its income

a century long perspective on agricultural development this article strategically surveys the past century s literature on agricultural development we organize the discussion around three grand themes that reveal the richness of agricultural development as an intellectual endeavor first we explore the role of agriculture in the broader development process from a macroeconomic and political economy perspective we then examine the role of technological and institutional change in successful agricultural development finally the focus turns to a microeconomic perspective on agricultural household decision making and the problems of imperfect and missing markets asymmetric information and transactions costs that lead to widespread apparent inefficiency and disequilibrium

some notes on how land title affects child labor secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development however evaluation of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task since 2004 a program called papel passado has issued titles to more than over 85 000 families and has the goal to reach 750 000 this paper examines the direct impact of securing a property title on child labor force participation this study uses a comparison between two close and similar communities in the city of osasco case the key point of this case is that some units participate in the program and others do not estimates generated using difference in difference econometric technique suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease in child labor force participation for the families that received the title compared with the others this findings are relevant for future policy tools for dealing with informality and how it affects economic growth

land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures theoretical and empirical analyses this article develops a theoretical framework to examine the relationship between land tenure arrangements and households investment in soil improving and conservation measures it then analyzes this relationship with a multivariate probit model based on detailed plot level data from villages in the brong ahafo region of ghana a major hypothesis tested is that investment in productivity enhancing and conservation techniques are influenced by land tenure arrangements the theoretical analysis and empirical results generally reveal that land tenure differences significantly influence farmers decisions to invest in land improving and conservation measures the findings also show that tenure security does affect farm productivity

land tenure and investment incentives evidence from west africa abstract the existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory i make two clarifying contributions to this literature first i pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts studies with small sample sizes those that use binary investment measures and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment self reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes second i test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from west africa while the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting it is less robust for labor use and other inputs such as manure or chemical fertilizer

property rights and productivity the case of joint land titling in vietnam this paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife using a plot fixed effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields for both individually and jointly held titles we conclude that there is no tradeoff between joint titling and productivity and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses

tenure security resource endowments and tree growing evidence from the amhara region of ethiopia we analyze roles of tenure insecurity and household endowments in explaining tree growing in ethiopia where farmers cannot sell or mortgage land and factor markets are imperfect unlike most other studies we use panel data and examine determinants of the decision and intensity of tree growing unlike other studies we compare the decision to keep trees and the decision to plant in the recent past the results suggest that land tenure insecurity influences the decision to grow trees but not the number of trees households grow household endowments time and location also explain tree growing by farmers

land ownership security and farm productivity evidence from thailand the article discusses the impact of land ownership security on farmers input use and output value economic theory suggests that farmers with secure legal ownership will have more incentives and better ability to invest due to a lower perceived risk and a favourable access to institutional credit this leads to higher variable inputs use and higher output per unit of land the article uses farm level data from three provinces in thailand to test the above propositions the data pertain to samples of squatters who lack secure legal ownership as contrasted with legally titled farmers the results confirm that the provision of secure ownership in ldcs can increase productivity significantly

insecure land rights and share tenancy evidence from madagascar most studies of tenurial insecurity focus on its effects on investment this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and land tenancy contracts based on distinct features of formal law and customary rights in madagascar this paper augments the canonical model of sharecropping by making the strength of the landlord s property right increasing in the amount of risk she bears within the contract using data on landlords subjective perceptions in rural madagascar empirical tests support the hypothesis that insecure property rights drive contract choice but offer little support in favor of the canonical risk sharing hypothesis