| By: |
Paul Castãneda Dower (New Economic School);
Tobias Pfutze (Oberlin College) |
| Abstract: |
An important aspect of property rights is specificity, the ability of a third
party to enforce rights. The empirical literature rarely isolates the effect
of specificity because exogenous changes, due to land reforms, either
simultaneously change both control and specificity or exclusively change
control. We investigate the effect of specificity in the context of the 1992
Salinas land reforms in Mexico, which constitutionally changed individual
control rights for all communal landholders but reserved changes to
specificity for a subsequent voluntary land certification program. We are able
to address selection into the program by taking advantage of the peculiarities
in the certification process. Using agricultural production data from before
and after the reform, we demonstrate that land certification significantly
increases agricultural investments but only for investments directly affected
by the changes in control. We explain the results using a simple model that
shows how specificity can better coordinate landholders' beliefs about the
implementation of changes in control. |
| Keywords: |
Property Rights, Specicity, Land Reform, Mexico, Ejido |
| JEL: |
K49 O10 O12 |
| Date: |
2012–11 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0188&r=law |