Thanks but No Thanks: A New Policy to Reduce Land Conflict

Martin Dufwenberg, Gunnar Köhlin, Peter Martinsson and Haileselassie Medhin

No 519, Working Papers from IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University

Abstract: Land conflicts in developing countries are costly. An important policy goal is to create respect for borders. This often involves mandatory, expensive interventions. We propose a new policy design, which in theory promotes neighborly relations at low cost. A salient feature is the option to by-pass regulation through consensus. The key idea combines the insight that social preferences transform social dilemmas into coordination problems with the logic of forward induction. As a first, low-cost pass at empirical evaluation, we conduct an experiment among farmers in the Ethiopian highlands, a region exhibiting features typical of countries where borders are often disputed. Our results suggest that a low-cost land delimitation based on neighborly recognition of borders could deliver a desired low-conflict situation if accompanied by an optional higher cost demarcation process. Keywords: Conflict, land-conflict game, social preferences, forward induction, Ethiopia, experiment, land reform JEL codes: C78; C93; D63; Q15

Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.unibocconi.it/igier/igi/wp/2014/519.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Thanks but no thanks: A new policy to reduce land conflict (2016)
Working Paper: Thanks but No Thanks: A New Policy to Reduce Land Conflict (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igi:igierp:519

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://repec.unibocconi.it/igier/igi/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University via Rontgen, 1 - 20136 Milano (Italy).
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().