This report evaluates the legal framework for rural land rights, the regulations of rural housing sites, the effects of land requisition on farmers who lose land, and some selected issues affecting urban land rights. The focus of this report is how to enhance property rights in a number of...

In India, land continues to be of enormous economic, social, and symbolic relevance. The way in which land can be accessed and its ownership documented is at the core of the livelihood of the large majority of the poor, especially in rural and tribal areas and determines the extent to which...

This article provides evidence from one of the poorest countries in the world that the institutions of property rights matter for efficiency, investment, and growth. With all land state-owned, the threat of land redistribution never appears far off the agenda. Land rental and leasing have been...

Motivated by the emphasis on secure property rights as a determinant of economic development in recent literature, we use village- and household-level information from about 800 villages throughout China to explore whether legal reform increased protection of land rights against unauthorized...

Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject,...

In the last years, several countries implemented policy interventions to entitle urban squatters, encouraged by the results of studies showing large welfare gains from entitlement. We study a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles to very poor families in a suburban area of Buenos...

A new database demonstrates that between 1600 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange, and improve land previously bound by landholding and inheritance...

We examine three reforms to property rights introduced by the United States in the Philippines in the early 20th century: the redistribution of large estates to their tenants, the creation of a system of secure land titles, and a homestead program to encourage cultivation of public lands. During...

This paper provides evidence from one of the poorest countries of the world that the property rights matter for efficiency, investment, and growth. With all land state-owned, the threat of land redistribution never appears far off the agenda. Land rental and leasing have been made legal, but...

The Scottish government is currently consulting on a radical programme of reform of succession law. The reforms have been adopted as part of the government's land reform strategy, aiming to make Scotland fairer and to treat children equally by ending the distinction between different types of...