Does Title Increase Large Farm Productivity ? Institutional Determinants of Large Land-Based Investments’ Performance in Zambia

Daniel Ayalew Ali and Klaus Deininger

No 9702, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The importance of well-functioning land markets for structural transformation via labor movements to the non-agricultural sector, growth in farm size, and the ability to use land as collateral for credit and has long motivated Government efforts at reducing the transaction costs of registering and transferring land and supporting large farm formation. Rigorous evidence on the effect of such measures has, however, been scant. This paper explores the impact of institutional arrangements on productivity for a representative sample of 3,000 large farms in Zambia, one of the earliest African adopters of such policies to close this gap. Instrumental-variable (IV) regressions suggest title has no effect on productivity, investment, or credit access and reduces rather than improves rental market participation. Measures to harness Zambia’s potential include improving title quality through exclusive use of digital registries; imposition of a land tax on state land to incentivize productive rather than speculative land use and cancel outdated legacy documents; and greater involvement of traditional authorities in record maintenance and land management, possibly via land tax revenue sharing.

Keywords: Land Administration; Food Security; Agricultural Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/33423162 ... rmance-in-Zambia.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Does title increase large farm productivity? Institutional determinants of large land-based investments' performance in Zambia (2021)
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:wbk:wbrwps:9702

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().