Land property rights and international migration: Evidence from Mexico

Michele Valsecchi

Journal of Development Economics, 2014, vol. 110, issue C, 276-290

Abstract: In this paper, I ask whether there is a relationship between land property rights and international migration. In order to identify the impact of property rights, I consider a country-wide land certification program that took place in Mexico in the 1990s. My identification strategy exploits the staggered implementation and the households' eligibility for the program. I find that the program increased the eligible households' likelihood of having one or more members abroad by 12%. In terms of the number of migrants, my coefficient estimates explain 26% of the 1994–1997 increase in migrants from ejido areas and 13–15% of the increase from all of Mexico. Consistent with our theoretical model, the impact is strongest for households without a land will. This implies that land inheritance issues drive at least part of the effect.

Keywords: Property rights; Land titling; Land reform; Land inheritance; International migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387814000121
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:deveco:v:110:y:2014:i:c:p:276-290

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.01.010

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().