When contracts are incomplete, relationship-specific investments may be underprovided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. The authors find evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan. Using data from households cultivating multiple plots under different tenure arrangements, they show that land-specific investment is lower on leased plots. This result is robust to the possible effects of asymmetric information in the leasing market. Greater tenure security also increases land-specific investment on leased plots.

This paper presents a new type of land
market analysis relevant to cities with plural tenure
systems as in West Africa. The methodology hinges on a
systemic analysis of land delivery channels, which helps to
show how land is initially made available for circulation,
how tenure can be formalized incrementally, and the
different means whereby households can access land. The
analysis is applied to the area of Bamako in Mali, where

Land reform can broadly be divided into
land tenure reform-the establishment of secure and
formalized property rights in land-and land
redistribution-the transfer of land from large to small
farmers. The paper is therefore divided into two chapters.
The first chapter gives a short narrative of some of the key
land tenure and land policy issues. While these issues
remain politically sensitive, there is a solid consensus

A decade ago in Mozambique, a stakeholder workshop where the need to improve access to industrial and commercial land as a means to encourage investment was a topic of discussion, a government official came up to. In order to create new jobs, generate more income, and modernize the economy, many countries see an urgent need to encourage industrial and commercial investment, both domestic and foreign. However, investment in many sectors cannot take place unless land, along with other basic factors of production, is available.

This paper investigates the impact of
land tenure insecurity on the migration decisions of
China's rural residents. A simple model first frames
the relationship among these variables and the probability
that a reallocation of land will occur in the following
year. After first demonstrating that a village leader's
support for administrative land reallocation carries with it
the risk of losing a future election, the paper exploits

This report is about implementing
low-cost rural land certification. Prior to 1975,
Ethiopia's land tenure system was complex and
semi-feudal. Tenure was highly insecure, arbitrary evictions
were common, and many lands underutilized. High inequality
of land ownership reduced productivity and investment,
leading to political grievances and eventually the overthrow
of the imperial regime in 1975. The Marxist government that

This paper represents an important
dimension in filling Latin America history's gaps
through the lens of land rights. The continent was populated
by many nations, functioned in harmony with nature, had a
variety of cultures and languages, and, developed many
different socio-economic systems (nationally and locally).
These nations were sovereign and recognized from Alaska to
Patagonia. Indeed, among all of them, we know they had very

Although early attempts at land titling
in Africa were often unsuccessful, the need to secure rights
in view of increased demand for land, options for
registration of a continuum of individual or communal rights
under new laws, and the scope for reducing costs by
combining information technology with participatory methods
have led to renewed interest. This paper uses a
difference-in-difference approach to assess economic impacts

The authors use data from Nicaragua to
examine the impact of the award of registered and
nonregistered title on land values and on investments
attached to land. They find that receipt of registered title
increases land values by 30 percent and greatly increases
the propensity to invest, bringing investment closer to the
optimum. Consistent with descriptive statistics indicating
great demand for regularization of land rights, especially

This report is about integrated land
policy reform in context of rapid urbanization in China.
Over the past thirty years, China has undergone a profound
economic and social transformation as it moves towards a
market-oriented economy. Land issues are implicated in this
ongoing transformation in numerous ways. The allocation and
security of land rights are key factors in China's
quest for economic growth and social stability. Land use

This paper takes a critical view of the
challenges that lie ahead for land?related development
projects in Central America. Drawing upon several sources of
information and types of analysis, including literature
reviews, field visits and rapid participatory assessments,
along with decades of professional experience, the authors
examine land-related development policies and projects over
the past two decades in Central America (although monitoring

The 2003 land law defines that the Land
Tenure Certificate (LTCs) carries both the wife's and
husband's names. Theoretically, the requirement of both
the wife's and husband's names on the LTCs aims at
enabling the wife to participate more actively in household
economic production for poverty reduction, and to protect
the rights of the woman in the event of civil disputes over
the land that has been provided with a LTCs. A field-based