Impacts of Low-Cost Land Certification on Investment and Productivity

By Stein T. Holden, K. Deininger, Hosaena Ghebru. 2009

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

New land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low-cost, propoor reforms are being tested in poor countries. This article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low-cost land certification implemented in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, using a unique household and farm-plot-level panel data set, with data from before and up to eight years after the reform. Alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity. Significant positive impacts were found, including effects on the maintenance of soil conservation structures, investment in trees, and land productivity. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Global and Planetary Change, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a3521c07cf601fc12e891e3d37b2ab20bea78059

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Citations in the corpus

The roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in Africa (2014, background): “…rights partly explain this behavior as more recent research in Ethiopia has documented that introduction of land certification has strengthened the feeling of tenure security and farmers’ investment in maintenance of soil conservation technologies (Holden et al., 2009; Deininger et al., 2011).”
Tenure Insecurity, Gender, Low-cost Land Certification and Land Rental Market Participation in Ethiopia (2011, unknown): “It may then appear strange that provision of weaker property rights in Ethiopia has given such significant positive effects on land rental market activity as demonstrated in this paper and on investments and land productivity as demonstrated by Holden et al. (2009).”
Are medium‐scale farms driving agricultural transformation in sub‐Saharan Africa? (2019, background): “Land registration and certification procedures – in sync with customary social norms and institutions – will be needed to provide such protection (Holden et al., 2009; Lawry et al., 2014; Huntington et al., under review).”
Agricultural Cooperatives and Investment in Organic Soil Amendments and Chemical Fertilizer in China (2018, methodology): “Empirical evidence using microlevel data indicates that investment in soil-improving measures helps increase farm productivity (Ersado et al. 2004; Holden et al. 2009).”
Land property rights, agricultural intensification, and deforestation in Indonesia (2018, background): “The empirical literature largely confirms these effects (Banerjee et al., 2002; Goldstein and Udry, 2008; Holden et al., 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…”
On the Structural Transformation of Rural Africa (2017, background): “Proper land certification is in some cases also having positive impacts for smallholders, inducing them to maintain soils, make productive investments, and enhance land productivity (Holden et al. 2008).”
Land documents, tenure security and land rental development: Panel evidence from China (2015, methodology): “This methodology has been used successfully by Holden et al. (2009) and Deininger et al. (2011) to estimate the effects of land certification on investment and land market participation in Ethiopia and by Ricker-Gilbert, Jayne, and Chirwa (2011) to estimate the effects of a government fertilizer…”
The impact of land property rights interventions on investment and agricultural productivity in developing countries: a systematic review (2017, background): “At the more informal end of the spectrum, they address mechanisms for recording household claims through local institutions (Holden, Deininger, and Ghebru 2009; Deininger, Ali, and Alemu 2009; Deininger, Ali, and Alemu 2011).”
Land pricing and its impact on land use efficiency in post-land-reform China: A case study of Beijing (2016, background): “Property rights, policy, market mechanism and other institutional factors have been reported to affect economic performance and agricultural productivity (See Benin, Ahmed, Pender, and Ehui, 2005; Coase, 1960; Holden, Deininger, and Ghebru, 2009; Jeon and Kim, 2000; Lin, 1992).”
UNDERSTANDING SOIL CONSERVATION DECISION OF FARMERS IN THE GEDEB WATERSHED, ETHIOPIA (2014, background): “Although some studies have been conducted in the Ethiopian highlands to identify factors that affect the adoption of soil conservation measures (e.g. Shiferaw and Holden, 1998; Shiferaw and Holden, 1999; Bewket and Sterk, 2002; Gebremedhin and Swinton, 2003; Bekele and Drake, 2003; Asrat et al., 200”