In the 1980s, the Thai government tried to legalize squatters living in certain geographical areas by issuing special titles that allowed for cultivation but restricted the sale and rental of the land. Using data from 2,874 farming households collected in 1997 and a differences-in-differences empirical strategy, we compare the differential rental rates between secured and unsecured plots in ref...

Land reforms in developing countries provide a good experiment for study on development economics, and in the case Taiwan the land reform provides specific historical context for us to closely examine the relationship between redistribution and growth. In this paper, we use panel data on the fifteen counties of Taiwan around 1950s and 1960s to empirically evaluate whether redistributive land re...

The question of land in Zimbabwe has always been political and gendered. Whereas land reform was necessary in the context of highly unequal land ownership patterns and poverty, this paper shows that the Fast Track Land Reform Programme diminished opportunities or spaces for women to be empowered and shrunk the democratic spaces for genuine participation of women in the development process by de...

We use data on inter-generational gains in educational attainment by some 500,000 individuals in 200 West Bengal villages to explore gender-differentiated impacts of land reform on human capital accumulation at the individual level. While there are significant gains (of about 0.3 years for males) in the immediate post-reform generation, their magnitude pales in comparison to second-generation e...

Land reform – the reallocation of rights to establish a more equitable distribution of farmland – can be a powerful strategy for promoting both economic development and environmental quality. This paper surveys land reform strategies, illustrated by the postwar reforms in East Asia and the ‘bottom-up’ land reform today being led by Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement. Land reform can reduce rur...

This paper investigates the impacts of Communal Property Associations on rural livelihoods in the Northern Province, South Africa. After a brief review of livelihoods and a short background to land reform in South Africa the paper details findings regarding the impact of land reform in the province. Quantitative and qualitative interviews were conducted from July 1999 until May 2000 and in Janu...

We examine whether there is empirical support at the household level for theoretical models that suggest that redistribution of productive assets can enhance opportunity and overall growth. To do so, we use a long panel data set for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries from land reform in the Philippines. Results indicate that land reform resulted in higher investment in physical capital, a grea...

Extensive land and market reform in Vietnam has resulted in dramatic increases in rice output over the past thirty years. The land and market reforms in agriculture were pervasive, moving the system of rice production from commune-based public ownership and control to one with effective private property rights over land and farm assets, competitive domestic markets and individual decision makin...

We probably all agree that these are worthy objectives and worthy beneficiaries. However, working at this level of high-flying, feel-good generality does not sharpen our understanding of what contribution land reform can actually make towards either improving or transforming the (different) positions of these somewhat different social categories of people, nor what scale of land reform the stat...

This paper examines the impact of a property rights reform in rural China that allowed farmers to lease out their land. We find the reform led to increases in land rental activity in rural households. Consistent with a model of transaction costs in land markets, our results indicate that the formalization of leasing rights resulted in a redistribution of land toward more productive farmers. Con...