IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/halshs-01145827.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Property Rights and Labour Supply in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth Houngbedji

    (AFD - Agence française de développement)

Abstract

In rural areas agricultural plots are seldom delineated and can be encroached upon by neighbours. Under these circumstances labour supply can be inefficiently distorted to safeguard the plots from encroachment. Using panel data, we study the variation of household labour supply following a land registration programme which has demarcated agricultural landholdings with cornerstones and has issued a documentary evidence of the household land rights. Our results indicate that after the registration of their landholdings, households with a land certificate have reduced total time allocated to farming activities with no impact on agricultural yields. The reduction in labour supply is primarily driven by a decrease of time allocated to the pre-planting season. This is consistent with qualitative evidence that plots under cultivation have no visible sign of demarcation during pre-planting and disputes arise as neighbouring landholders pushed the boundaries of their plots while ploughing. Following land registration, the cornerstones reduce the need for guarding parcels as they make encroachment easier to detect.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth Houngbedji, 2018. "Property Rights and Labour Supply in Ethiopia," Working Papers halshs-01145827, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01145827
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01145827v2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01145827v2/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crewett, Wibke & Bogale, Ayalneh & Korf, Benedikt, 2008. "Land tenure in Ethiopia: Continuity and change, shifting rulers, and the quest for state control," CAPRi working papers 91, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Wibke Crewett & Benedikt Korf, 2008. "Ethiopia: Reforming Land Tenure," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(116), pages 203-220, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chhaochharia, Vidhi & Ghosh, Suman & Vishwasrao, Sharmila, 2024. "Property rights and human capital investment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 11-31.
    2. Kotchikpa Gabriel Lawin & Lota Tamini, 2018. "Droits de propriété foncière et performance des petits producteurs agricoles des pays en développement : une synthèse de la littérature empirique," CIRANO Working Papers 2018s-05, CIRANO.
    3. Moshoeshoe,Ramaele Elias, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Free Primary Education on Educational Achievement : Evidence from Lesotho," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9404, The World Bank.
    4. Congdon Fors, Heather & Houngbedji, Kenneth & Lindskog, Annika, 2019. "Land certification and schooling in rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 190-208.
    5. Aberra, Adam & Chemin, Matthieu, 2021. "Does legal representation increase investment? Evidence from a field experiment in Kenya," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bezabih, Mintewab & Kohlin, Gunnar & Mannberg, Andrea, 2011. "Trust, tenure insecurity, and land certification in rural Ethiopia," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 833-843.
    2. Hasanbasri, Ardina & Koolwal, Gayatri & Kilic, Talip & Moylan, Heather, 2021. "Multidimensionality of Land Ownership Among Men and Women in Sub-Saharan Africa," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315317, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Addiswork Tilahun Teklemariam & Logan Cochrane, 2021. "The Rush to the Peripheries: Land Rights and Tenure Security in Peri-Urban Ethiopia," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-20, February.
    4. Kenneth Houngbedji, 2015. "Property Rights and Labour Supply in Ethiopia," PSE Working Papers halshs-01145827, HAL.
    5. Bezabih, Mintewab & Holden, Stein, 2010. "The Role of Land Certification in Reducing Gender Gaps in Productivity in Rural Ethiopia," RFF Working Paper Series dp-10-23-efd, Resources for the Future.
    6. Cohen, Marc J. & Lemma, Mamusha, 2011. "Agricultural extension services and gender equality: An institutional analysis of four districts in Ethiopia," ESSP working papers 28, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Wisdom Akpalu & Mintewab Bezabih, 2015. "Tenure Insecurity, Climate Variability and Renting out Decisions among Female Small-Holder Farmers in Ethiopia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-16, June.
    8. Bizuneh Yimenu, 2023. "Measuring and Explaining de facto Regional Policy Autonomy Variation in a Constitutionally Symmetrical Federation: The Case of Ethiopia, 1995–2020," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 53(2), pages 251-277.
    9. Holden, Stein T. & Tilahun, Mesfin, 2020. "Farm size and gender distribution of land: Evidence from Ethiopian land registry data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    10. Genet Alem, 2021. "Urban Plans and Conflicting Interests in Sustainable Cross-Boundary Land Governance, the Case of National Urban and Regional Plans in Ethiopia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-23, March.
    11. Wisdom Akpalu & Mintewab Bezabih, 2014. "Tenure Insecurity, Climate Variability, and Renting-Out Decisions Among Female Smallholder Farmers in Ethiopia," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-140, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Wayessa, Gutu Olana, 2020. "Impacts of land leases in Oromia, Ethiopia: Changes in access to livelihood resources for local people," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    13. Yanling Peng & Yuansheng Jiang & Yu Hong, 2022. "Heterogeneous Preferences for Selecting Attributes of Farmland Management Right Mortgages in Western China: A Demand Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-14, July.
    14. Chamberlin, Jordan & Schmidt, Emily, 2012. "Ethiopian Agriculture: A dynamic geographic perspective," IFPRI book chapters, in: Dorosh, Paul A. & Rashid, Shahidur (ed.), Food and agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and policy challenges, chapter 2, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    15. Amsalu K. Addis & Simplice Asongu & Zhu Zuping & Hailu Kendie Addis & Eshetu Shifaw, 2020. "Chinese and Indian investment in Ethiopia: infrastructure for ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ exchange and the land grabbing approach," International Journal of Emerging Markets, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 16(6), pages 998-1025, June.
    16. Congdon Fors, Heather & Houngbedji, Kenneth & Lindskog, Annika, 2019. "Land certification and schooling in rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 190-208.
    17. Abebaw Andarge Gedefaw, 2023. "Analysis of the Contribution of Land Registration to Sustainable Land Management in East Gojjam Zone, Ethiopia," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-21, May.
    18. Zeng, Di & Alwang, Jeffrey & Norton, George & Jaleta, Moti & Shiferaw, Bekele & Yirga, Chilot, 2018. "Land ownership and technology adoption revisited: Improved maize varieties in Ethiopia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 270-279.
    19. Mintewab Bezabih & Andrea Mannberg & Eyerusalem Siba, 2014. "The land certification program and off-farm employment in Ethiopia," GRI Working Papers 168, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    20. Ratner, B. D., 2013. "Addressing conflict through collective action in natural resource management: a synthesis of experience," IWMI Working Papers H046235, International Water Management Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural investment; Ethiopia; Property rights; Land administration; Time allocation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • Q1 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01145827. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.