The Development of Individual Rights to Property in Tribal Africa

Household Welfare, Investment in Soil and Water Conservation and Tenure Security: Evidence from Kenya

“…The first is the original idea that if farmers feel more secure in their right or ability to use their land in the long-run and they will be more willing to make investments that take a longer period to repay-high sunk costs (Demsetz, 1967;Ault and Rutman, 1979;Feder et al, 1988;Binswanger et al, 1995;Zimmerman and Carter, 1999;Shiferaw and Holden 1999;Place and Otsuka, 2000;Place and Swallow, 2000;Gebremedhin and Swinton, 2003;Deininger and Jin, 2002;Li et al, 1998;Jacoby et al, 2002). The second reason is that if land markets exist and farmers can easily sell their land, the added value of SWC investments can be made liquid, and hence the return to those investments can be realized without having to wait the full length of gestation period of the investment.…”

In The Land of the Chiefs : Customary Law, Land Conflicts, and the Role of the State in Peri-Urban Ghana

“…Since Demsetz's seminal 1967 paper on the evolution of property rights regimes (Demsetz 1967), a number of studies has observed how, over time, customary tenure sys-tems experience spontaneous simplification and individualization of rights whereby households increasingly acquire broader rights of exclusion and transfer as population pressure and levels of commercialization increase (Atwood 1990: 661;Ault and Rutman 1979;Bassett 1993;Benjaminsen and Lund 2003a: 8-9;Benjaminsen and Sjaastad 2003: 147;Bruce 1988: 23-25;Lund 2000: 2;Migot-Adholla and Bruce 1994: 3-4;Toulmin and Quan 2000a: 28;Platteau 1996;Quan 2000: 45, 49). Studies of the governing of common pool resources have provided insights into the circumstances in which local communities can or cannot successfully regulate the management of their natural resources without external interference (Ostrom 1990).…”

“…This can partly be explained by the fact that there exist two quite separate schools of land research. The first school focuses largely on economic issues such as investment and productivity and often compares these two issues under state programs and customary systems of land tenure (Acock 1962;Atwood 1990;Ault and Rutman 1979;Feder and Noronha 1987;Gerschenberg 1971;North 1990;Platteau 2000;Podedworny 1971;Sjaastad and Bromley 1997;Yudelman 1964). The second school studies land management and land tenure mainly as social processes.…”

Land Inheritance and Schooling in Matrilineal Societies: Evidence from Sumatra

“…While greater individualization is associated with more secure land rights (Ault and Rutman, 1979) and increased incentives to invest in land improvement (Feder and Feeny, 1993;Besley, 1995), concerns have been raised regarding its equity impact, particularly on the distribution of land ownership rights by gender. It has often been argued that a shift from communal land tenure towards individualized rights erodes women's land rights (Lastarria-Cornhiel, 1997).…”