Computerization and Development: Formalizing Property Rights and its Impact on Land and Labor Allocation

I test the land and labor market effects of a property rights reform that computerized rural land records, and provided access to digitized records and automated transactions to agricultural landowners and cultivators in Pakistan. Using the staggered roll-out of the program, I find that while the reforms do not shift land ownership, landowning households are more likely to rent out land and lower their agricultural participation. At the same time, cultivating households have access to more land, as rented in land and overall farm size per cultivating household increases. Improved tenure security also shifts the type of rental contracts, and the input choices of cultivators. Aggregate district level data suggests an improvement in overall crop yield. These results have implications for both the allocation of land across farmers and the selection of labor into farming.