Customary Land Conversion in African Cities

Pierre Picard and Harris Selod ()
Additional contact information
Harris Selod: World Bank

No 16462, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We propose an urban land use model to discuss the conversion of customary agricultural land to formal and informal residential land in a developing country city. Because customary land sales are insecure, migrant buyers face a risk of eviction, which affects land markets in non-trivial ways. Both tenure risk and asymmetric information cause the city extent and population to be too small. Empirical tests of the model for Bamako, Mali, confirm the existence of tenure insecurity and information asymmetry in the primary but not in the secondary land market, consistently with information revelation after initial sales by customary holders.

Keywords: urbanization; land markets; property rights; land tenure formalization; market failure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 P14 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Customary Land Conversion in African Cities (2023)
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