# I. **Introduction'**

The role played by private property rights in the economic development of the Western world has been powerfully documented by economic historians such as North and Thomas (1973) and Rosenberg and Birdzell (1986), emphasising particularly the ability of individuals and organizations to make enforceable claims to property and make contracts stick. Furthermore, empirical studies have estimated the relationship between private property rights and economic growth, notably the studies by Torstensson (1994) and Goldsmith (1995) which found a significantly positive association between secure property rights and economic growth. These two studies, which are the most empirically rigorous of them all, were based on cross- country, crosssectional regression analysis. Property rights were measured through proxies. Torstensson's study used, as indicators of property rights, the degree to which property is state-owned, and whether countries undertake seizure of private property while Goldsmith's study used the latter indicator plus the degree to which each national government protects private property. While these studies have made a very useful contribution to the empirical analysis of the economic effects of property rights, their inability to use direct measures of property rights has stood out as a considerable weakness.

An area in which direct measures of property rights have been used is the study of the economic effects of property rights in land in which the formalization of ownership of land rights, through land titling and registration, has been related to improved access to institutional credit, higher investments in land, higher land productivity, higher land values and higher output and incomes. The most empirically rigorous and influential of these studies is by Feder et al. (1988) which established a positive link between land registration and improved access to credit in rural Thailand. With improved access to credit, Thai farmers with titled land were found to invest more in land and to generate higher output than the farmers with untitled land. Some related empirical studies reviewed by Feder and Nishio (1998) found that land registration led to: higher land values in Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Honduras, Brazil and Peru; higher investments in land in Costa Rica, Brazil, Honduras, Jamaica and Ghana; and higher output and income in Costa Rica, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. However, empirical studies done in some rural areas of Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Somalia on the economic effects of land registration have found no statistically significant links between land registration on the one hand and investment and land productivity on the other (Mighot-Adholla et al., 1991; Carter et al., 1991; Roth et al., 1994; and Place and MighotAdholla, 1998).

What is notable about these land registration studies is that they have been focused on one sector, either rural (agricultural) or urban. Land registration impacts that accrue across sectors and those that affect the economy as a whole have been unaccounted for. This paper attempts to address this weakness by developing a theoretical and conceptual framework to guide the empirical analysis of the effects of land registration on the economy as a whole. Furthermore, by using a direct measure of private property rights (land registration), our study aims to overcome the weakness of the earlier property rights studies which used proxies to measure private property rights. Empirical I This paper has been written based on a dissertation by the author submitted as a partial requirement for a Masters Degree in Surveying at the School of Surveying of the University of East London, UK (Byamugisha, 1999).