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Despite accounts of increasing large farm penetration in Africa and an active debate on the differential potential of smallholder versus large farms to satisfy Africa's food requirements, evidence on the extent and performance of different farm types remains limited. A census and subsequent representative survey of 3,000 large farms in Zambia, one of the African countries with the highest share of large farms, allows characterizing the impact of institutional arrangements on large farms' establishment and productive performance. While policies rather than exogenous price shocks seem to have driven large farm expansion, average productivity is not different from small farms and title has no impact on productivity, investment, or credit access, most likely because the transferability of titles remains limited, undermining the suitability of such land as collateral. Significant effects of title on self-reported land prices point toward land being acquired for speculative purposes, suggesting that a tax on titled land, together with improved land service delivery might be a desirable policy option.

Access To Finance --- Agricultural Productivity --- Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Communities and Human Settlements --- Land Administration --- Land Investment --- Land Rights --- Land Titling --- Land Use and Policies

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This paper reports on a randomized field experiment that uses price incentives to address economic and gender inequality in land tenure formalization. During the 1990s and 2000s, nearly two dozen African countries proposed de jure land reforms extending access to formal, freehold land tenure to millions of poor households. Many of these reforms stalled. Titled land remains the de facto preserve of wealthy households and, within households, men. Beginning in 2010, the study tested whether price instruments alone can generate greater inclusion by offering formal titles to residents of a low-income, unplanned settlement in Dar es Salaam at a range of subsidized prices, as well as additional price incentives to include women as owners or co-owners of household land. Estimated price elasticities of demand confirm that prices-rather than other implementation failures or features of the titling regime-are a key obstacle to broader inclusion in the land registry, and that some degree of pro-poor price discrimination is justified even from a narrow budgetary perspective. In terms of gender inequality, the study finds that even small price incentives for female co-titling achieve almost complete gender parity in land ownership with no reduction in demand.

Banks and Banking Reform --- Economic Theory & Research --- Field Experiment --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Formalization --- Gender --- Land Titling --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Markets & Market Access --- Municipal Housing and Land --- Political Economy --- Urban Development

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Despite strong beliefs that property titling and registration will enhance credit access, empirical evidence in support of such effects remains scant. The gradual roll-out of computerization of land registry systems across Andhra Pradesh's 387 sub-registry offices allows us to combine quarterly administrative data on credit disbursed by all commercial banks for an eleven-year period (1997-2007) aggregated to the sub-registry office level with the date of shifting registration from manual to digital. Computerization had no credit effect in rural areas but led to increased credit-supply in urban ones. A marked increase of registered urban mortgages due to computerization supports the robustness of the result. At the same time, estimated impacts from reduction of the stamp duty are much larger, suggesting that, without further changes in the property rights system, impacts of computerization will remain marginal.

Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress --- Banks & Banking Reform --- Commercial banks --- Credit access --- Currency --- Debt Markets --- Deeds --- E-Business --- Economic Theory & Research --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial market --- Information technology --- International bank --- Land titling --- Lenders --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market development --- Mortgages --- Private Sector Development --- Property rights --- Registry office --- Registry offices --- Registry reform --- Registry systems --- Reserve --- Reserve bank --- Settlement --- Stamp duty

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Despite strong beliefs that property titling and registration will enhance credit access, empirical evidence in support of such effects remains scant. The gradual roll-out of computerization of land registry systems across Andhra Pradesh's 387 sub-registry offices allows us to combine quarterly administrative data on credit disbursed by all commercial banks for an eleven-year period (1997-2007) aggregated to the sub-registry office level with the date of shifting registration from manual to digital. Computerization had no credit effect in rural areas but led to increased credit-supply in urban ones. A marked increase of registered urban mortgages due to computerization supports the robustness of the result. At the same time, estimated impacts from reduction of the stamp duty are much larger, suggesting that, without further changes in the property rights system, impacts of computerization will remain marginal.

Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress --- Banks & Banking Reform --- Commercial banks --- Credit access --- Currency --- Debt Markets --- Deeds --- E-Business --- Economic Theory & Research --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial market --- Information technology --- International bank --- Land titling --- Lenders --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market development --- Mortgages --- Private Sector Development --- Property rights --- Registry office --- Registry offices --- Registry reform --- Registry systems --- Reserve --- Reserve bank --- Settlement --- Stamp duty

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Adding a module designed to measure land tenure-related Sustainable Development Goals indicators to the 2018 round of Zambia's labor force survey shows low transferability and high levels of tenure insecurity. Having a title is associated with greater transferability and reduced insecurity. Although demand for titles, including willingness to pay, is high, current policies limit the scope for tenure regularization and reinforce rather than reduce gender discrimination. Efforts in this direction need to be preceded by (i) procedural reform to reduce costs, streamline procedures, and make them gender-sensitive; (ii) institutional change to increase the efficiency of service delivery and ensure record maintenance; and (iii) legal change to recognize customary tenure and improve land management and transferability. Adding the Sustainable Development Goals land tenure module to ongoing surveys has the potential to provide the evidence base needed to design results-based approaches for the land sector and reliably track progress.

Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Common Property Resource Development --- Communities and Human Settlements --- Customary Land Rights --- Demand for Title --- Gender --- Gender and Law --- Land Tenure --- Land Titling --- Land Use and Policies --- Legal Reform --- Real and Intellectual Property Law --- SDGs --- Sustainable Development Goals --- Transferable Rights