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

Martin Dufwenberg, Gunnar Köhlin, Peter Martinsson and Haileselassie Medhin

No 4864, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C93 D63 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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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)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4864

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