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Why are overlapping land rights disincentive against investment in agriculture?: customary land tenure institution in West Africa

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  • Kimura, Yuichi

Abstract

Under customary land tenure systems in Ghana, lands obtained via matrilineal bonds exhibit a low inclination to invest in rubber, or input use and yield are low when investment in rubber is made in those lands. The land titling project and the rubber company’s intervention in reconciling land tenure with the farmers’ lineage groups do not have causal impacts on investments. The property rights thesis predicts that the overlapped and unclear land rights in those family-provided lands hold back investment incentives. However, empirical findings did not support the explanations based on the risk of future re-appropriation of land, re-distribution pressure on the output, labor shirk in the commonly managed lands, or a lack of lands’ collateral function as the explanation for the investment gap in family-provided lands. Controversially, the low investment is more prominent when households have individualized land rights to perform within-household inheritance, which explains the most significant part of the low investment in family-provided lands. A particular inclination to avert investment risk must lie behind the low investment in customary lands.

Suggested Citation

  • Kimura, Yuichi, 2023. "Why are overlapping land rights disincentive against investment in agriculture?: customary land tenure institution in West Africa," MPRA Paper 116613, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:116613
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Land tenure institution; land use; land titling; investment in agriculture;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • Q14 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Finance
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

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