Is Land Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa Cost-Effective?

By Hanan G. Jacoby, B. Minten. 2007

291 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Is Land Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa Cost-Effective? A cost benefit analysis suggests that the current system of formal titling should not be extended in rural Madagascar and that any new system of land registration would have to be quite inexpensive to be worthwhile. Indeed, establishing a modern property rights system without legally recognizing informal rights may expand the scope for rent-seeking, thus creating additional insecurity (Atwood 1990). Purchasing a titled plot without easily being able to update the name on the document exposes the buyer to the risk that a relative of the seller, sharing the family name, might subsequently claim the plot or challenge the transfer. Analyses omitted here for brevity indicate that there is no significant advantage to owning titled land in terms of a household's access to formal credit, after controlling for the household's landholdings within the mailles (such land being much more likely to be titled), and titled plots are no more likely to be used as collat...

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science, Urban Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2ff8b435174630ebe3dfe954cfd8e3ce37a19f6d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. K. Deininger
2. D. Ali
3. M. Qaim
4. G. Feder
5. V. Krishna
6. James Fenske
7. Markus Goldstein
8. Tekie Alemu

In Soil Science

1. D. Ali
2. K. Deininger
3. G. Feder
4. James Fenske
5. Markus Goldstein
6. Tekie Alemu
7. V. Krishna
8. M. Qaim

In Urban Studies

1. D. Ali
2. K. Deininger
3. G. Feder
4. James Fenske
5. Tekie Alemu
6. Songqing Jin

Citations in the corpus

• The impact of land property rights interventions on investment and agricultural productivity in developing countries: a systematic review (2017, unknown): “Effects on monetary value of land productivity (log scale) Δlog(value ha) − 04.138.072.003.0 Nicaragua 1981−1998 (Foltz et al., 2000) Nicaragua 1994−2000 (Deininger & Chamorro, 2004) Peru 1993−2004 (Torrero & Field, 2005) Cambodia 1989−2004 (Markussen, 2008) Vietnam 1993−1998 (Do & Iyer, 2007) Vietn”
• Land Registration, Governance, and Development : Evidence and Implications for Policy (2009, background): “Land values are estimated to increase by at most 6 percentage points due to titling, implying that the cost of land titling will have to be very low for such a measure to be justified economically (Jacoby and Minten 2007).”
• Impacts of land certification on tenure security, investment, and land markets: evidence from Ethiopia (2008, background): “…of these issues has limited the effectiveness of or benefits from efforts at land registration in many African contexts (Pinckney and Kimuyu 1994, Bruce 3 and Migot-Adholla 1994, Jacoby and Minten 2007) and it will be important to check whether the case at hand was able to address some of these.”
• Land Tenure and Investment Incentives: Evidence from West Africa (2011, background): “This effect does not necessarily only apply to the poor or weak— landownersmay seek title to their plots in order to prevent expropriation by their tenants (Jacoby and Minten, 2007).”
• Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa: Pilot Evidence from Rwanda (2011, background): “This can easily render land registration uneconomical, as in Madagascar where benefits from titling, while significant and positive, were well below the cost of acquiring documentation in an inefficient system (Jacoby and Minten, 2007).”
• Land property rights, agricultural intensification, and deforestation in Indonesia (2018, background): “…2009; Deininger et al., 2011; Fenske, 2011; Grimm and Klasen, 2015; Lawry et al., 2016), although in some cases the influence of land titling or more secure property rights was found to be insignificant (Quisumbing and Otsuka, 2001; Brasselle et al., 2002; Jacoby and Minten, 2007; Bellemare, 2013).”
• Tenure Insecurity, Gender, Low-cost Land Certification and Land Rental Market Participation in Ethiopia (2011, unknown): “Several case studies, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda, revealed that land rental markets are good for poverty reduction because they enhance access to land for the poor; however, there are significant transaction costs undermining the potential of these markets.”