Land Titling and Litigation

We study a land-titling reform implemented as a randomized control trial to isolate its effects on litigation. The reform consisted of demarcating land parcels, registering existing customary rights, and granting additional legal protection to right holders. Ten years after implementation, the refor...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of law & economics 2022-02, Vol.65 (1), p.131-156
Main Authors: Arruñada, Benito, Fabbri, Marco, Faure, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clinical trials
Complementarity
Disputes
Households
Land
Litigation
Property rights
Reforms
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We study a land-titling reform implemented as a randomized control trial to isolate its effects on litigation. The reform consisted of demarcating land parcels, registering existing customary rights, and granting additional legal protection to right holders. Ten years after implementation, the reform doubled the likelihood of households experiencing land-related litigation, but disputes did not escalate into more frequent violent episodes. We suggest that this increase in litigation reflects the complementarity of land titling by registration and by judicial procedures aimed at further clarifying property rights, as the reform registered titles to all parcels but left many titles subject to adverse claims. This raised the demand for complementary litigation aimed at perfecting titles for low-value parcels that, under the customary system, were optimal to keep unclarified. Consistent with this explanation, we find that the increase in litigation took place among households that plausibly own land of lower value.
ISSN:0022-2186
1537-5285
DOI:10.1086/716756