based on remote sensing (Deininger & Xia 2018), an area where significant advances have recently been made through use of survey-based training data (Burke _et al._ 2020a) offers considerable promise.

Second, the impact of land title on small farms has been explored by numerous studies (Lawry _et al._ 2016). ‘Stylized facts’ from this literature are that titling helps to increase investment (Fenske 2011), transferability (Deininger & Jin 2006), and -if women’s rights are documented- female empowerment (Deininger _et al._ 2008; Ali _et al._ 2014). However, credit effects are rare because (i) banks will accept land as collateral only if registries are kept up-to-date;<sup>5</sup> and (ii) even if titled properties could realistically be foreclosed,<sup>6</sup> fixed costs of loan origination may limit positive effects to large farms (Carter & Olinto 2003). The finding that, for Zambian large farms, title affects neither investment nor credit access is thus at variance with the literature. It has been attributed to limited demand, i.e., land in Zambia being viewed as a store of wealth rather than a productive asset (Sitko _et al._ 2014) or methodological differences.<sup>7</sup> We argue that supply side issues related to legal value of land documents, the quality of the information they contain, and the states’ capacity for (and cost of) enforcement are equally important and that better measurement of these aspects and rigorous evaluation of the extent to which they affect title demand and tangible outcomes will be key to understand the land sector’s institutional performance and identification of ways to improve it.

Finally, a large literature on structural transformation has shown that land (rental) market transaction cost may impede farm growth (Adamopoulos & Restuccia 2014) and occupational diversification (Chen 2017). In principle, eliminating such costs could have large effects on productivity (Chen _et al._ 2017), the structure of employment and GDP (Gottlieb & Grobovsek 2019), and equity (Restuccia 2021). We complement this by showing that limited or outdated registry coverage of large farms makes it difficult for owners to transfer land and for third parties to ascertain land ownership are key sources of such transaction costs. Moreover, beyond rental, registries to support active sales markets that allow liquidation of land pledged as collateral are needed for credit markets to provide resources for investment by productive farms. Beyond regulatory change to allow cost reductions through use of technology, digital service delivery, appropriate standards, and elimination of rents, reducing the cost of land market transfers may thus require more rather than less public sector involvement (Palsson 2021).

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section two provides a conceptual framework and institutional background on land tenure and LSLBI in Zambia to lay out the questions to be explored. Section three discusses descriptive evidence from the listing, a comparison of cultivated area with digitized cadastral

> 5 Resources to keep land registries up to date can be considerable as shown for Jamaica (Barnes & Griffith-Charles 2007), the Philippines (Maurer & Iyer 2008), Argentina (Galiani & Schargrodsky 2016), Peru (Gutierrez & Molina 2020),and Rwanda (Ali _et al._ 2017; Ali _et al._ 2019b). 6 Foreclosing on owner-occupied urban properties was difficult in Argentina (Galiani & Schargrodsky 2010) and Peru (Field & Torero 2006). This has not prevented policy-makers from articulating unrealistic expectations that ultimately failed to materialize (Stein _et al._ 2016),

> 7 Huntington and Shenoy (2021) also find a significant zero effect of land documentation on investment in Zambia. As discussed below, the reason for this finding is not because they use a randomized approach but because the documents issued in their intervention have no legal value.

4