Skip to content

Category: Africa

Published May 15, 2013

Yes to Land Rights, but Land Titles Are No Silver Bullet

Some economists argue that ensuring people have titles to their land can ensure a feeling of security and boost production. … The greatest proponent of the argument is Hernando de Soto, a development economist who has managed to win praise from the likes of Bill Clinton and the libertarian Cato Institute.

There is plenty of evidence that land rights are connected to productivity, but new research out of Madagascar shows that it is not always the case.

Duke University researcher Marc F. Bellemare tested whether the land rights component of a $100 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact with the government of Madagascar. He found that the provision of formal land rights, meaning land titles, had not measurable impact on productivity when comparing farmers that did and did not benefit from the MCC compact.

Holding a land title is not sufficient if structures are not in place to enforce land ownership and dole it out.

From a very nice article by Tom Murphy on Humanosphere, which discusses the policy implications of my forthcoming Land Economics article on land rights in Madagascar.

Continue readingYes to Land Rights, but Land Titles Are No Silver Bullet
Published May 1, 2013

Does International Child Sponsorship Work?

We have all seen the commercials on television. Many of them readily fall under the broad name of “poverty porn,” and most of them feature resigned-looking developing-world children set against a sad soundtrack. All of them ask us to help by sponsoring a child in a developing country.

But does international child sponsorship work? In a new article (older, ungated copy here) in the Journal of Political Economy, Bruce Wydick, Paul Glewwe, and Laine Rutledge give an answer that is bound to surprise many development cynics:

Child sponsorship is a leading form of direct aid from wealthy country households to children in developing countries. Over 9 million children are supported through international sponsorship organizations. Using data from six countries, we estimate impacts on several outcomes from sponsorship through Compassion International, a leading child sponsorship organization. To identify program effects, we utilize an age-eligibility rule implemented when programs began in new villages. We find large, statistically significant impacts on years of schooling; primary, secondary, and tertiary school completion; and the probability and quality of employment. Early evidence suggests that these impacts are due, in part, to increases in children’s aspirations.

Published April 1, 2013

More on British vs. French Colonial Institutions

An email from Chuhang Yin, a former student of mine:

I just read your newest blog post and I am fascinated by this topic. I found a recent [Quarterly Journal of Political Science] paper by Alexander Lee and Kenneth Schultz at Stanford titled “Comparing British and French Colonial Legacies: A Discontinuity Analysis of Cameroon” and think it might be relevant. Their focus is on public goods and individual wealth, but not on land productivity. The abstract is here:

“Colonial institutions are thought to be an important determinate of post-independence levels of political stability, economic growth, and public goods provision. In particular, many scholars have suggested that British institutional and cultural legacies are more conducive to growth than those of France or other colonizers. Systematic tests of this hypothesis are complicated by unobserved heterogeneity among nations due to variable pre- and post-colonial histories. We focus on the West African nation of Cameroon, which includes regions colonized by both Britain and France, and use the artificial former colonial boundary as a discontinuity within a national demographic survey. We show that rural areas on the British side of discontinuity have higher levels of household wealth and local public provision of piped water. Results for urban areas and centrally-provided public goods show no such effect, suggesting that post-independence policies also play a role in shaping outcomes.”

Specifically about results:

“Using data from the 2004 Demographic and Health Survey of Cameroon, we compare communities near the former colonial border using both a regression discontinuity research design and a comparison of neighboring villages that straddle the boundary. We show that rural households on the British side have higher levels of wealth and are more likely to have access to piped water, a locally provided public good. These results do not hold for urban areas or for centrally-provided public goods like roads and education, suggesting that the effect of colonial-era differences can be attenuated by post-colonial policies.”

I also found a paper published in 2000 in Comparative Politics titled “Institutions, Context, and Outcomes: Explaining French and British Rule in West Africa” which might also be useful:

“I seek to solve this puzzle by tracing the origin of class formation in Ivory Coast’s and Ghana’s rural areas. Specifically, French and British colonial institutions generated different property rights and landholding patterns, forming the basis for different patterns of class formation.”

On page 258 to 260 the author discusses the differences of British and French institutions.