estimate of 39%. However, there is no evidence for lagged effects in either urban or rural areas; in the former the full impact materializes in the first year after computerization with only a marginal increase thereafter while in the latter, passage of time does not lead to a more significant effect. Disaggregation by type of transfer suggests that, while computerization did not contribute to the rapid rise in the number of registered sales that was observed earlier even in urban areas, it led to a marked increase in the number of mortgages which is estimated to have increased some 60% as a consequence of the intervention. This is consistent with the notion that, in view of the large difference in stamp duty for the two transaction types (13% for sales vs. 3% for mortgages) in urban areas before the 2005 reduction, a given computerizationinduced reduction in registration cost would have had a bigger relative effect on mortgages than on sales.

Table 4 provides results from an ‘augmented’ regression that includes not only computerization but also an indicator variable for reduced levels of stamp duty and its interaction with an urban indicator. The coefficients on computerization in urban areas are very similar to those obtained earlier. At the same time, stamp duty reduction is estimated to have had a significant, positive, and quantitatively large effect everywhere. The notion that registration is price elastic is supported by the finding that, for mortgages, the stamp duties for which remained unchanged in 2005, indicator variables are insignificant throughout. For other transactions, in particular sales, duty reductions are estimated to have increased the number of registered transaction by more than 50%, with no additional impact in urban areas. Together with earlier findings, this suggests that the relative size of the computerization-induced implicit reduction of transaction costs for sales -and for property registration in rural areas more generally- was too small to have had a measurable impact on observed transactions frequency. Although lack of more information on total costs of registering property precludes us from putting a bound on the size of any computerizationinduced transaction cost reduction, we conclude that these have been small overall. It supports the notion that the impacts of computerization are context-specific.

# **5. Conclusion and policy implications**

This paper contributes to the literature in two ways. Methodologically, our results suggest that high frequency administrative data can usefully complement information from individual or repeated rounds of household surveys. While care is needed to distinguish between time- and location-specific factors, we demonstrate that reduced cost of updating and accessing land information can significantly increase urban credit access. Such effects are remarkable in view of the fact that the shortcomings of land administration in India are widely recognized, in particular the fact that information provided by land registries falls far short of the security conveyed by full title (Panagariya 2008). Contrary to conventional wisdom according to which full title is needed as a precondition for credit effects, this suggests that better access to reliable land information of any type can help improve credit market functioning. Where they exist and operate 14