Is abandonment of agricultural land increasing with better ownership protection? Cross-country evidence from transition economies

Zarema Akhmadiyeva and Thomas Herzfeld

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2026, vol. 60, issue 3, 599-629

Abstract: Given the high potential of abandoned agricultural land in some transition economies, we investigate the drivers of agricultural land-use change with a specific focus on land titling and transferability. We use time-series cross-sectional data for twenty-nine transition countries in East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union for the period from 1991 to 2014. We operationalize individual land ownership and transferability using land legislative documents to create variables for our empirical analysis. The results suggest that improving ownership rights only increases land abandonment in transition economies, while countries with full transferability of individual plots experience higher land use.

Keywords: land abandonment; institutional change; transition economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: P26 Q15 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:343501

DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2026.2699631

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