Institutions to allow these at low cost and without creating a risk of land loss can thus increase productivity of land use and contribute to structural transformation. Land rental allows labor to move from agriculture to non-agriculture without forgoing the benefits of asset ownership, e.g., in terms of a social safety net. This is clearly evidenced by higher levels of out-migration from agriculture as consequence of property rights reform in Mexico, especially for households with weaker initial rights (de Janvry _et al._ 2015). While there is little need for formal documents if transfers remain short-term and involve only community members, longer-term transfers, including with outsiders, may offer greater opportunities for productivity increase. But lack of documentation may prompt landlords to restrict land transfers to close kin (Macours 2014), especially if migration is involved (de Janvry _et al._ 2015). Having rights and/or transfers recorded will reduce the cost of negotiating and enforcing contracts by making reliable information on land ownership publicly available (Arrunada 2009).

Increased scope for market transactions allows trade in assets and their use as collateral in financial markets. Full realization of gains from trade requires that reasonably complete, current, and authoritative information on the assignment of property rights—which is normally provided by public registries—be available at low cost to a set of agents with sufficiently diverse skills to allow efficiency-enhancing transactions. Credit impacts from land titling or registration can be expected only if registries are comprehensive, authoritative, and up to date, and if third parties such as mortgage lenders can access reliable registry information at low cost on a routine basis. While the limited number of studies finding credit impacts suggests these conditions may not always apply, in India, land record computerization—which reduced costs of registry access but did not alter the information it contains—increased the number of registered mortgages and volume of credit by in urban areas by 10.5 points (Deininger and Goyal 2012).

To make their establishment viable economically, formal systems must offer advantages, either in terms of higher tenure security or lower cost, over existing ones. In a traditional setting, customary settings often offer high levels of tenure security (Bruce and Migot-Adholla 1994) but they may come under pressure if land becomes more scarce, chiefs act as landlords rather than custodians of community assets (Berry 2009), demand from outsiders or investors increases (Chimhowu and Woodhouse 2010), or if land acquisition for public purpose neglects local occupancy rights. If demand for higher levels of tenure security by all or certain parts of the population warrants formalization, registration systems need to be designed and run in an efficient way for benefits from their existence and operation to exceed costs (Jacoby and Minten 2007) and avoid irrelevance (Atwood 1990; Pinckney and Kimuyu 1994).<sup>4</sup> In fact, even if benefits exceed costs (Galiani and Schargrodsky 2010), lack of awareness, incentives, or collective action to establish required

> 4 The technical literature on this topic has recently embraced the notion of a continuum of rights and the need to adopt an approach along this continuum that is ‘fit for purpose’ (Enemark _et al._ 2014).

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