Fang Xia

Smallholders' Land Ownership and Access in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New Landscape?

While scholars agree on the importance of land rental markets for structural transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent and nature of their operation, including potential obstacles to their improved functioning, remains limited. This study uses household-level data from six countries to start filling this gap and derive substantive as well as methodological lessons. The paper finds that rental markets transfer land to land-poor, labor-rich, and more productive producers throughout. But vast cross-country variation in transfers and the fact that female managers could possibly improve their income by leasing out land point towards barriers to participation that policy might address. Methodological and substantive conclusions are derived.

Impact of Property Rights Reform to Support China?S Rural-Urban Integration: Village-Level Evidence from the Chengdu National Experiment

As part of a national experiment, in 2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property rights reforms, including complete registration of all land together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects to compare 529 villages just inside and outside the prefecture’s border. The results suggest that the reforms increased tenure security, aligned land use closer to economic incentives, mainly through market transfers, and led to an increase in enterprise start-ups. These impacts, most of which are more pronounced for villages with lower travel time to Chengdu city, point toward high potential gains from factor market reform.

Quantifying spillover effects from large farm establishments : the case of Mozambique

Almost a decade after large land-based investment for agriculture increased sharply, opinions on its impact continue to diverge, partly because (positive or negative) spillovers on neighboring smallholders have never been rigorously assessed. Applying methods from the urban literature on Mozambican data suggests that changes in the number and area of large farms within 25 or 50 kilometers of these investments raised use of improved practices, animal traction, and inputs by small farmers without increasing cultivated area or participation in output, credit, and nonfarm labor markets; or, once these factors are controlled for, yields. The limited scope and modest size of the estimated benefits point toward considerable unrealized potential. The paper discusses ways to systematically explore the size of such potential and the extent to which it is realized.

Inheritance Law Reform, Empowerment, and Human Capital Accumulation: Second-Generation Effects from India

This paper uses evidence from three Indian states, one of which amended inheritance legislation in 1994, to assess first- and second-generation effects of inheritance reform using a triple-difference strategy. Second-generation effects on education, time use, and health are larger and more significant than first-generation effects even controlling for mothers endowments. Improved access to bank accounts and sanitation as well as lower fertility in the parent generation suggest that inheritance reform empowered females in a sustainable way, a notion supported by significantly higher female survival rates.

Does Inheritance Law Reform Improve Women's Access to Capital? Evidence from Urban India

This paper explores the impacts of the amendment to the 1956 Hindu Succession Act on Hindu females’ intergenerational transfers of physical and human capital. Information on the timing of three generations’ key life events helps isolate the causal effects. Our primary estimation strategy is a difference-in-difference estimator in which we compare the share of total assets received by male and female siblings in the same household between households whose heads died before and after the amendment. In the case of human capital investment, we compare primary education attainment of young cohorts who were potentially benefit from the reform and the older cohorts who were unlikely to benefit from the reform. In light of the fact that the amendment applies only to Hindus but not to Muslims, we compare the results between Hindus and Muslims for a robustness check. The results suggest that the amendment increased the share of total physical assets received by Hindu females who were single before the reform by 0.216. They also point towards an increase in the share of gifts transferred to Hindu females by 0.147. Hindu girls gained 0.594 years of more primary education than boys relative to the old cohort after the amendment.

Gendered Incidence and Impacts of Tenure Insecurity on Agricultural Performance in Malawi’s Customary Tenure System

Abstract Malawi’s recent passage of Land Acts provide an opportunity to clarify different aspects of the country’s land tenure in an integrated way. To assess whether doing so might be economically justified, we explore incidence and impact of tenure insecurity among smallholders. Insecurity is not only widespread, with 22 per cent of land users being concerned about losing their land, but is also associated with a productivity loss of 9 per cent for female operators, equivalent to US

Assessing effects of large-scale land transfers: challenges and opportunities in Malawi's estate sector

11 million per year at the national level, enough to pay for a nation-wide tenureregularisation programme in two to three years.

Moving Off the Farm: Land Institutions to Facilitate Structural Transformation and Agricultural Productivity Growth in China

This study uses data from the complete computerization of agricultural leases in Malawi, a georeferenced farm survey, and satellite imagery to document the opportunities and challenges of land-based investment in novel ways. Although 1.5 million hectares, or 25 percent, of Malawis agricultural area is under agricultural estates, analysis shows that 70 percent has expired leases and 140,000 hectares are subject to overlapping claims. This reduces revenue from ground rent by up to US

Quantifying Spillover Effects from Large Land-based Investment: The Case of Mozambique

35 millon per year or 5 percent of public spending and, by decreasing tenure security, may affect the productivity of land use. Indeed a 2006/07 survey shows large farms underperforming small ones in yield, productivity, and intensity of land use, while failing to generate positive spillovers. Recently passed Land Acts create opportunities to clarify the boundaries and lease status for existing estates as a first step toward systematic demarcation of customary estates. Failure to follow this sequence could exacerbate insecurity, with undesirable effects on productive performance.