We present evidence from the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization program. We examine the link between land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a ...model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. The tenure security improvement through demarcation induces a 23 to 43 percent shift toward long-term investment on treated parcels. We explore gender and parcel location as relevant dimensions of heterogeneity. We find that female-managed landholdings in treated villages are more likely to be left fallow—an important soil fertility investment. Women respond to an exogenous tenure security change by shifting investment away from relatively secure, demarcated land and toward less secure land outside the village to guard those parcels.
•Economic theory supports the notion that property rights affect resource allocation.•A randomized-controlled trial of a land demarcation intervention was conducted in rural Benin.•Findings show that lowering expropriation risk significantly increases investment incentives.•The impacts are strongest among groups with weaker initial levels of tenure (women).•Women shift production away from relatively secure land towards less secure land.
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2.
The Mechanisms of Spatial Mismatch Gobillon, Laurent; Selod, Harris; Zenou, Yves
Urban studies,
11/2007, Volume:
44, Issue:
12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH) argues that low-skilled minorities residing in US inner cities experience poor labour market outcomes because they are disconnected from suburban job ...opportunities. This assumption gave rise to an abundant empirical literature, which is rather supportive of the SMH. Surprisingly, it is only recently that theoretical models have emerged, which probably explains why the mechanisms of spatial mismatch have long remained unclear and not properly tested. This article presents relevant facts, reviews the theoretical models of spatial mismatch, confronts their predictions with available empirical results and indicates which mechanisms deserve further empirical tests.
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Land Matters Corsi, Anna; Selod, Harris
2023, 2-20-2023
eBook, Book
Open access
Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), land is scarce and valuable. Demand for land is projected to dramatically increase to meet the needs of a fast-growing urban population. At the same ...time, the supply of land is restricted by weak governance and climate factors, causing the quasi-exhaustion of cultivable land reserves. As a result, a crisis is looming. Yet, land continues to be used inefficiently, inequitably, and unsustainably.
Land Matters identifies and analyzes the economic, environmental, and social challenges associated with land in the MENA region, shedding light on policy options and proposing paths to reform. It concludes that MENA countries need to act promptly, think more holistically about land, reassess the strategic trade-offs, and minimize land distortions. This report promotes a culture of open data, transparency, and inclusive dialogue on land, while filling major data gaps. These important steps will contribute to renewing the social contract, transforming the region economically and digitally, improving women’s land rights, and facilitating recovery and reconstruction in a context of dramatic social, political, and climatic transformation.
We consider a search-matching model in which black workers are discriminated against and the job arrival rates of all workers depend on social networks as well as distance to jobs. Location choices ...are mainly driven by racial preferences. There are multiple equilibria and we show that all workers are in general better off in the equilibrium where blacks are close to jobs. We also show that, in cities where black workers reside far away from jobs, the optimal policy is to impose higher quotas or employment subsidies than in cities where they live close to jobs.
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We present an urban land use model with land tenure insecurity and information asymmetry regarding risks of contested land ownership, a very common issue in West African cities. A market failure ...emerges as sellers do not internalize the impact of their market participation decision on the average quality of traded plots, which in turn affects other sellers and buyers’ decisions. The equilibrium is suboptimal and has too many transactions of insecure plots and too few transactions of secure plots. This market failure can be addressed when agents trade along trusted kinship lines that discourage undisclosed sales of insecure plots. Such kinship matching is an important feature of West African societies, including on the market for informal land, as illustrated by a unique survey administered in Bamako, Mali. In the model, the extent to which the market failure is addressed increases with the intensity of kinship ties. When sellers also have the possibility of registering their property right in a cadastre, this not only further attenuates information asymmetry but also helps reduce risk. We find complementarity between kinship matching and registration: As transactions along trusted kinship lines tend to involve plots that are more secure on average, kinship matching makes registration better targeted at insecure plots traded outside kinship ties. In this context, a partial registration fee subsidy can bring the economy to the social optimum.11We are grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for comments that helped us substantively improve the paper as well as to Amadou Cissé for the many discussions about social structures in West Africa that initially motivated this paper, to Demba Karagnara who coordinated field surveys in Bamako in 2012 and 2022, and to Pierre M. Picard, Jan Brueckner and Tony Yezer for suggestions and technical comments on the model. We are also grateful to Eliana la Ferrara and Karen Macours for useful insights on kinship and land markets in developing countries, as well as to Thierry Verdier, Miren Lafourcade and the participants to the Labor and Public Economics Seminar at the Paris School of Economics, to the International Conference of Development Economics and to the Annual Conference of the Centre for the Study of African Economies for various suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge the funding of the World Bank and of the Paris School of Economics Mobility Grant, a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR-18-CE22-0013-01), the Labex OSE and the Labor and Public Economics Group at the Paris School of Economics .
•Land tenure insecurity is common in West African urban and peri-urban land markets.•Information asymmetry regarding land tenure risks hinders the trade of secure plots.•Matching along trusted ethnic relationships reduces information asymmetry.•Ethnic matching combined with land registration separates low- and high-risk plots.•A partial registration fee subsidy can bring the economy to the social optimum.
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This paper investigates the causal effects of the spatial organisation of Brussels on unemployment propensities. Using census data at the individual level, the unemployment probability of young ...adults is estimated while taking into account personal, household and neighbourhood characteristics. The endogeneity of residential locations is solved by restricting the sample to young adults residing with their parents; the potential remaining bias is evaluated by conducting a sensitivity analysis. The results suggest that the neighbourhood of residence significantly increases a youngster's probability of being unemployed, a result which is quite robust to the presence of both observed and unobserved parental covariates.
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This paper reviews the recent literature on rural-urban migration in developing countries, focusing on three key questions: What motivates or forces people to migrate? What costs do migrants face? ...What are the impacts of migration on migrants and the economy? The literature paints a complex picture whereby rural-urban migration is driven by many factors and the returns to migration as well as the costs are very high. The evidence supports the notion that migration barriers hinder labor market adjustment and are likely to be welfare reducing. The review concludes by identifying gaps in current research and data needs.
•Rural-urban migration is driven by many factors and has large returns and costs.•Climatic shocks and conflicts have become significant drivers of migration to cities.•Policy-induced barriers are not desirable as they hinder labor market adjustment.•Sometimes small nudges can be sufficient to facilitate migration to productive areas.•Improved data collection efforts will be required to fill research gaps.
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This paper offers a new theoretical approach to urban squatting, reflecting the view that squatters and formal residents compete for land within a city. The key implication is that squatters ..."squeeze" the formal market, raising the price paid by formal residents. The squatter organizer ensures that squeezing is not too severe, since otherwise, the formal price will rise to a level that invites eviction by landowners. Because eviction is absent in equilibrium, the model differs from previous analytical frameworks, where eviction occurs with some probability. It also facilitates a general equilibrium analysis of squatter formalization policies.
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What Drives the Global "Land Rush"? Arezki, Rabah; Deininger, Klaus; Selod, Harris
The World Bank economic review,
01/2015, Volume:
29, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We review evidence regarding the size and evolution of the "land rush" in the wake of the 2007-8 boom in agricultural commodity prices, and we study the determinants of foreign land acquisition for ...large-scale agricultural investment. The use of data on bilateral investment relationships to estimate gravity models of transnational land-intensive investments confirms the central role of agro-ecological potential as a pull factor. However, this finding contrasts the standard literature insofar as the quality of the destination country's business climate is insignificant, and weak tenure security is associated with increased interest for investors to acquire land in the country. Policy implications are discussed.
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