Computerization and Development: Formalizing Property Rights and its Impact on Land and Labor Allocation

beg, Sabrin (2019): Computerization and Development: Formalizing Property Rights and its Impact on Land and Labor Allocation.

Abstract

I test the land and labor market effects of a property rights reform that computerized rural land records, and provided access to digitized records and automated transactions to agricultural landowners and cultivators in Pakistan. Using the staggered roll-out of the program, I find that while the reforms do not shift land ownership, landowning households are more likely to rent out land and lower their agricultural participation. At the same time, cultivating households have access to more land, as rented in land and overall farm size per cultivating household increases. Improved tenure security also shifts the type of rental contracts, and the input choices of cultivators. Aggregate district level data suggests an improvement in overall crop yield. These results have implications for both the allocation of land across farmers and the selection of labor into farming.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Property Rights, Rural Mobility, Agricultural Land Markets, ICT in Development, Institutions
• Subjects: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O10 - General; 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

References

Adamopoulos, T., L. Brandt, J. Leight, and D. Restuccia (2017). Misallocation, selection and productivity: A quantitative analysis with panel data from china. National Bureau of Economic Research working paper No. 23039.

Adamopoulos, T. and D. Restuccia (2014). The size distribution of farms and international productivity differences. American Economic Review 104(6), 1667– 97.

Ali, D. A., K. Deininger, and M. Goldstein (2014). Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa: pilot evidence from Rwanda. Journal of Development Economics 110, 262–275.

Banerjee, A., E. Duflo, C. Imbert, S. Mathew, and R. Pande (2014). Can e- governance reduce capture of public programs? experimental evidence from a financial reform of india’s employment guarantee. Technical report, Technical Report, MIT December 2014.

Banerjee, A. and S. Jain (2003). E-governance in india: Models that can be applied in other developing countries. In International Conference on Electronic Government, pp. 488–491. Springer.

Beg, S. (2019). Electoral accountability and clientelism. Working Paper.

Bellemare, M. F. (2012). Insecure land rights and share tenancy: Evidence from Madagascar. Land Economics 88(1), 155–180.

Besley, T. (1995). Property rights and investment incentives: Theory and evidence from Ghana. Journal of Political Economy, 903–937.

Besley, T. J. and M. Ghatak (2009). Property rights and economic development.

Binswanger-Mkhize, H. P. (2013). The stunted structural transformation of the indian economy. Economic and Political weekly 48(26-27), 5–13.

Bryan, G., S. Chowdhury, and A. M. Mobarak (2014). Underinvestment in a profitable technology: The case of seasonal migration in Bangladesh. Econometrica 82(5), 1671–1748.

Carter, M. R. and P. Olinto (1996). Decomposition and identification of the impact of land titling on agricultural productivity in Paraguay.

Chari, A., E. M. Liu, S.-Y. Wang, and Y. Wang (2017). Property rights, land misallocation and agricultural efficiency in china. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. w24099.

Chen, C. (2017). Untitled land, occupational choice, and agricultural productivity. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 9(4), 91–121.

Chen, C., D. Restuccia, and R. Santaeulàlia-Llopis (2017). The effects of land markets on resource allocation and agricultural productivity. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.

Deininger, K., D. A. Ali, and T. Alemu (2010). Land rental markets: transaction costs and tenure insecurity in rural ethiopia. In The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa, pp. 70–86. Routledge.

Deininger, K., D. A. Ali, and T. Alemu (2011). Impacts of land certification on tenure security, investment, and land market participation: evidence from Ethiopia. Land Economics 87(2), 312–334.

Deininger, K. and A. Goyal (2012). Going digital: Credit effects of land registry computerization in India. Journal of Development Economics 99(2), 236–243.

Do, Q.-T. and L. Iyer (2008). Land titling and rural transition in Vietnam. Economic Development and Cultural Change 56(3), 531–579.

Feder, G. (1988). Land policies and farm productivity in Thailand. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Field, E. (2007). Entitled to work: Urban property rights and labor supply in Peru. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(4), 1561–1602.

Field, E. and M. Torero (2006). Do property titles increase credit access among the urban poor? evidence from a nationwide titling program. Technical report.

Foster, A. D. and M. R. Rosenzweig (2011). Are indian farms too small? mechanization, agency costs, and farm efficiency. Unpublished Manuscript, Brown University and Yale University.

Galiani, S. and E. Schargrodsky (2010). Property rights for the poor: Effects of land titling. Journal of Public Economics 94(9-10), 700–729.

Ghosh, A. and G. Banerjee (2006). A study of e-governance in rural India. Delivering E-government, 222.

Goldstein, M. and C. Udry (2008). The profits of power: Land rights and agricultural investment in Ghana. Journal of political Economy 116(6), 981–1022.

Gollin, D., S. Parente, and R. Rogerson (2002). The role of agriculture in develop- ment. American economic review 92(2), 160–164.

Gonzalez, M. L. (2016). Land records go digital in Punjab, Pakistan. End Poverty in South Asia (http://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia).

Hornbeck, R. (2010). Barbed wire: Property rights and agricultural development. Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(2).

Hsieh, C.-T. and P. J. Klenow (2009). Misallocation and manufacturing tfp in china and India. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(4), 1403–1448.

López, R. and C. Romano (2000). Rural poverty in Honduras: Asset distribution and liquidity constraints. In Rural Poverty in Latin America, pp. 227–243. Springer.

Lunduka, R., S. T. Holden, and R. Øygard (2010). Land rental market participation and tenure security in Malawi. In The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa, pp. 125–143. Routledge.

Macours, K., A. De Janvry, and E. Sadoulet (2010). Insecurity of property rights and social matching in the tenancy market. European Economic Review 54(7), 880–899.

Restuccia, D. and R. Santaeulalia-Llopis (2017). Land misallocation and produc- tivity. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 23128.

Roth, M. and N. McCarthy (2013). Land and Tenure, Property Rights and Economic Growth in Rural Areas. USAID Issue Brief.

Sural, A. (2013). Punjab may abolish patwari, kanungo systems. Times of India.

Wang, S.-Y. (2012). Credit constraints, job mobility, and entrepreneurship: evidence from a property reform in China. Review of Economics and Statistics 94(2), 532–551.

World Bank (2013). World Development Indicators 2013. World Bank Publications.