Who Gains from Individual Property Rights? Evidence from the Allotment of Mapuche Reservations
Felipe Jordan, Robert Heilmayr
Individual property rights can improve economic efficiency but may expose marginalized groups to dispossession. We use a geographic regression discontinuity design to quantify the long-term impacts of individual rights on the socioeconomic conditions of the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group. The allotment of communally-held titles into individual rights reduced Mapuche control over land, while improving land use efficiency and labor allocation. Although socioeconomic conditions within former reservations improved, exposure to dispossession when allotted parcels were sold prevented reservations’ descendants from sharing in the economic benefits of individual property rights.
Event: World Bank Land Conference 2024 - Washington
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