Land Consolidation, Tenure Documentation, and Land Rental Markets: Evidence from rural Vietnam

Land fragmentation is widely recognized as a constraint on smallholder agriculture, raising production costs, limiting mechanization, and reducing efficiency. Land consolidation programs have been introduced in many countries to address this problem, yet their economic effects depend not only on plot reconfiguration but also on institutional implementation and land market functioning. This paper examines the impacts of Vietnam's state‐led land consolidation program using six waves of household panel data (2008–2018) from two provinces where consolidation was implemented. Impacts are estimated with two‐way fixed effects and a staggered difference‐in‐differences approach that accounts for heterogeneous adoption timing. The results show that the consolidation program substantially reduced land fragmentation: the number of plots per household fell by roughly three plots, average plot size increased by about 66 percent, and the distance between plots and homesteads declined by approximately 23 percent. At the same time, administrative delays in reissuing land‐use‐right certificates temporarily reduced the share of titled and collateral‐eligible land. While households’ overall access to credit is not adversely affected, land rental markets are significantly disrupted, with both rent‐in and rent‐out declining. Such reductions in land transactions may impede efficient land reallocation and operational scale adjustment, thereby delaying investment and productivity gains from improved land structure. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of institutional implementation and complementary market functioning for realizing the benefits of land consolidation in Vietnam and other smallholder economies.