2011). Households who participate actively in off-farm markets may be more likely to supply land to the rental market (Kung 2002) and restrictions on land rental may limit the scope for off-farm development as in Ethiopia (Deininger _et al._ 2003a). Equalization of land access through rental markets is also observed in Kenya (Jin and Jayne 2013), Uganda (Baland _et al._ 2003), Ethiopia (Deininger and Jin 2006; Teklu and Lemi 2004), and Eastern Europe (Swinnen and Rozelle 2009).

Secure property rights are a precondition for effective market functioning in a number of respects (Besley and Ghatak 2010). In India, improving producers’ access to information by computerizing land records helped to increase the number of registered transactions and credit access in urban but not rural areas (Deininger and Goyal 2012). In Mexico, reforms to clarify land ownership,<sup>2</sup> in particular inheritance, and allow leasing out, are estimated to have increased eligible households’ likelihood of having one or more members abroad by 12%, explaining 26% of the 1994–1997 increase in the number of migrants from the entire _ejido_ sector (Valsecchi 2014). In China, where sales are not allowed, issuance of certificates helped reduce the risk of leased out land being taken back and redistributed (Mullan _et al._ 2011), and created institutional preconditions for households to take on non-agricultural activities (Deininger _et al._ 2014) and increase efficiency (Deininger and Jin 2009).

With land being a key asset throughout the world (Deininger 2003; Doss _et al._ 2012), land ownership by women is a key determinant of their bargaining power in the household, their ability to take advantage of economic opportunities and cope with risks (Deere _et al._ 2013), and overall household welfare. The literature highlights the impact of female property rights to land and other assets on girls’ survival rates (Qian 2008), their anthropometric status (Duflo 2003), schooling (Luke and Munshi 2011), and broader empowerment (Deininger _et al._ 2013b). Yet, social conventions governing land access<sup>3</sup> and land conflicts that disproportionately affect women may reduce their security of property rights and is likely one of the factors contributing to significantly lower productivity on femalemanaged plots in Malawi (Kilic _et al._ 2013a), Nigeria (Oseni _et al._ 2014), and Ethiopia (Aguilar _et al._ 2014).

Land sales may allow households who want to move into the non-agricultural economy to mobilize the equity that will help them to exploit profitable economic opportunities but they are less liquid and may be affected by credit and other factor market imperfections. Indeed, asymmetric information and risk have long been shown to lead to credit rationing in equilibrium and the use of collateral as one way of reducing such credit rationing (Stiglitz and Weiss 1981). Its immobility and relative indestructibility make land ideal collateral. However, banks will use it for this purpose on a large scale only if they have access to low-cost means to make reliable inferences on ownership and the absence of other encumbrances for any given plot of land. Such information is normally provided by land registries. Compared to rental, land purchases will require more resources and purchase decisions will also be

> 2 The program, PROCEDE, provided a total of more than 3 million households in participating communities with certificates for their housing plot, their individual agricultural plots, and their right to use the common land.

> 3 In 15 Sub-Saharan African countries, less than half of widows inherited land (Peterman 2012) and their ability to hold on to their husband’s land is highly unpredictable (Chapoto _et al._ 2011). Provisions to make their inheritance rights more secure are thus important (Cooper and Bird 2012).

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