Silver bullet or shooting blanks: Estimating the impact of formal land property rights on economic development in rural Colombia
Camilo Pardo, Kurt Birson
Economic development literature often portrays secure property rights as essential for growth and prosperity. Four arguments are often put forward to support this claim - First, property rights provide secure tenure from probable seizure. Second, in a situation of insecure tenure, individuals will have to incur in external costs of defending their property, therefore diverting resources that could be used for more productive activities. Third, they provide the possibility to use land to support other transactions, such as gaining access to the credit market. Finally, property rights facilitate gains from trade. However, solid empirical evidence supporting this claim has been elusive and focused mainly on urban settings. To address this gap, we employ a novel approach to estimate economic output at the municipal level in rural Colombia using satellite nighttime lights data and along with registry-cadastre data, test the validity of the above claim.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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