It is often suggested that the poor are credit-rationed due to their lack of formal collateral. Using a household survey from Indonesia, we estimate the impact of having a land title on formal credit access. Adopting an instrumental variable approach, we find that having a formal title significantly increases a household's probability of ever having had a formal loan and the observed loan amount. Why land titles increase access to credit is still not clear. Incorporating data from a unique survey of bankers in Indonesia, we will argue that possessing a formal title increases a household's incidences of formal credit not because the value of the title as collateral but because of what possessing a title signals about the household to the banker. We apply a simple model of contract choice to show how title can act as an indirect signal.
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Paper provided by American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) in its series 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI with number
19120.
Length: Date of creation: 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea05:19120
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Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, 2003.
"Unbundling Institutions,"
NBER Working Papers
9934, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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