The first of these questions, i.e. the appropriateness of the process and the extent to which it suffered from wealth- and gender-biases commonly encountered in other land administration projects, is of direct relevance for Ethiopia.<sup>14</sup> To explore this, we combine data on kebele-level processes and overall results with household-level information, disaggregated by gender where needed, on participation at different stages in the process and the nature of certificates received. Comparing means of key variables for the richest and the poorest quintile in each of the regions allows us to test statistically for wealth bias.<sup>15</sup> A second area of interest is whether, within a policy environment which many would consider to be far from ideal, land certification has made an impact and, if yes, whether its sustainability will be assured. To explore this, we draw on a combination of data and information sources, namely (i) village level information on the extent to which certificates are kept up to date; (ii) subjective assessments of the willingness to pay for certificates and their perceived impact on of tenure security by beneficiaries; (iii) a test of the extent to which households are aware of key legal provisions; and (iv) regressions of investment and its amount that include presence of a certificate as one of the right hand side variables.

Finally, to gauge the scope for replicating processes utilized in Ethiopia in other contexts and the potential to conduct registration of subsequent transactions with full or partial cost recovery in Ethiopia, we use data from Amhara, the region that adopted the most elaborate first-time registration process, to cost the current effort. Building on this, we can make inferences on the incremental cost of options to add a spatial reference and of computerization to ensure updating of the registry at different administrative levels.

# **3. Empirical evidence on process and impact**

In this section, we provide empirical evidence from the village- and household-level to assess the extent to which different regions were able to implement the process as anticipated and to explore the gender dimension and potential wealth biases that may have arisen in doing so. To gauge the impact and longerterm sustainability of certification, we complement this with arrangements to update subsequent transactions, a test of legal knowledge by the population and LAC members.

# **3.1 Village level evidence on the process of first-time certification**

Community-level data suggest that the process was largely implemented as planned, in particular that (i) in most locations public meetings were held before and during the certification process; (ii) land use committees (LACs) were popularly elected and represented most of the sub-kebeles; and (iii) adjudication

> 14 Experience in a wide range of settings has shown that, to empower the poor rather than provide a pretext for land grabbing by those with better access to resources, political connections, or information, efforts at land titling -and by implication the award of lesser certificates- need to meet two conditions (Deininger 2003). To reduce the risk of spurious claims and to make the process cost-effective, documents need to be awarded on a systematic basis to everybody at once and proceedings be conducted in a participatory manner with strong community participation. Also, steps to award certificates should be preceded by information campaigns to ensure that all interested parties, including those who may hold secondary rights such as women or herders, be fully aware of the rules.

> 15 With large inter-regional welfare differences use of the poorest or richest quintiles for the whole sample would not be sufficiently different from regional dummies, leading us to use the top and bottom quintile for each region. Results are very robust to the choice of cut-off point, i.e. remain virtually unchanged if we use deciles or quartiles rather than qunitiles of the per capita expenditure distribution.

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