American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 10 2015

Delinking Land Rights from Land Use: Certification and Migration in Mexico

Alain de Janvry¹; Kyle Emerick²; Marco Gonzalez-Navarro³; Elisabeth Sadoulet¹

¹ University of California at Berkeley, 207 Giannini Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3310 (e-mail: ) · ² Tufts University, 8 Upper Campus Road, Medford, MA 02155-6722 (e-mail: ) · ³ University of Toronto, 121 St. George Street, Toronto, Canada M5S2E8 (e-mail: )

Abstract

In many developing countries property rights over rural land are maintained through continuous personal use instead of by land titles. We show that removing the link between land use and land rights through the issuance of ownership certificates can result in large-scale adjustments to labor and land allocations. Using the rollout of the Mexican land certification program from 1993 to 2006, we find that households obtaining certificates were subsequently 28 percent more likely to have a migrant member. We also show that even though land certification induced migration, it had little effect on cultivated area due to consolidation of farm units.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20130853

Volume

105

Issue

10

Pages

3125-3149

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓