Why and How Overlapping Land Rights Undermine Agricultural Investment: Evidence from Customary Tenure in Ghana

Kimura, Yuichi (2025): Why and How Overlapping Land Rights Undermine Agricultural Investment: Evidence from Customary Tenure in Ghana.

Abstract

Under Ghana's customary land tenure system, family land allocated through matrilineal ties is associated with a lower propensity to take up rubber cultivation and lower yields where rubber is planted. Consistent with conventional wisdom, tenure insecurity reduces yields, but most of this effect operates through diminished labor input by family members rather than through reduced material input or lack of collateral value of land. Moreover, tenure insecurity arises primarily from undefined rights among household members, rather than from the more distant possibility of lineage-level reallocations. Company-led interventions to reconcile land rights within kin groups effectively mitigated these gaps by reducing family members' disincentives to work on shared land.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Land tenure institution; land titling; tenure reconciliation; investment in agriculture.
• Subjects: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O12 - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O13 - Agriculture ; Natural Resources ; Energy ; Environment ; Other Primary Products; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q1 - Agriculture > Q12 - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q1 - Agriculture > Q15 - Land Ownership and Tenure ; Land Reform ; Land Use ; Irrigation ; Agriculture and Environment

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