Property rights, factor allocation and household welfare: experimental evidence from a land titling program in India

Subramanian, A. and Kumar, P. (2024) Property rights, factor allocation and household welfare: experimental evidence from a land titling program in India. Journal of Development Economics, 167, 103238. (doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103238)

Abstract

Increasing evidence shows the significance of de jure land ownership in determining agricultural productivity, yet the causal evidence of the effectiveness of land rights is scarce. We leverage experimental variation induced by nudging Indian farmers to obtain formal land titles. We find that titling increases agricultural investments, crop productivity, and paddy profits. We identify the tenancy security as the potential channel for impact from titling on the labour market and collateral effect for higher investment. Farmers respond to titling by releasing locked-in family labour, and those who obtain land titles make welfare gains and recover the full cost of titling.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Agriculture, factor misallocation, land title, randomized controlled trial.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Subramanian, Dr Arjunan

Creator Roles

Subramanian, A.: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

• Authors: Subramanian, A., and Kumar, P.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Economics
• Journal Name: Journal of Development Economics
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0304-3878
• ISSN (Online): 1872-6089
• Published Online: 20 December 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Journal of Development Economics 167: 103238
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
190468		Information, market creation and agricultural growth.	Arjunan Subramanian	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/J009334/1	BS - Economics