The Effects of Land Title Registration on Tenure Security, Investment and the Allocation of Productive Resources : Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The Fruits (and Vegetables) of Crime: Protection from Theft and Agricultural Development

“…I then decompose yields by crop characteristics perceived to be related to theft risk, and show that this yield increase is driven by crops that were expected to be less vulnerable to theft. I propose mechanisms that explain this effect, consistent with other work showing improved security allows reallocation of labour from vulnerable to less-vulnerable plots (Goldstein et al, 2018;Agyei-Holmes et al, 2020).…”

Pumps, Prosperity and Household Power: Experimental Evidence on Irrigation Pumps and Smallholder Farmers in Kenya

“…This suggests the feedback effects from development to empowerment may take longer to realize as they require women to accumulate assets. We find evidence that women maintain control over the pump granted to them, suggesting that their property rights over this asset are stronger than over land where weaker property rights for women leads to inefficiencies (Goldstein and Udry, 2008;Agyei-Holmes et al, 2020). We also find evidence consistent with the literature that technology adoption can impact women empowerment (Alesina et al, 2013) but here we cannot disentangle whether this is due to the allocation of the pumps to women, or due to the technology being usable regardless of gender, or whether increased agricultural income would have this effect regardless of the allocation.…”

Agricultural expansion and trade-off decision making using analytic hierarchy process in Ghana

“…In Southern Ghana, access to market opportunities encouraged farmers to expand their farms. In other instances, farmers are expected to take advantage of increased domestic prices of agricultural commodities (Agyei-Holmes et al, 2020). In the case of commercial farmers, their second important motivation for expansion was social factors such as the availability of land for farming and favorable lease terms.…”