Abstract :
[en] During Vietnam's transition from a socialist to a market economy, household's property rights over agricultural land were considerably strengthened through a land certification program. This resulted in active formal credit and land markets, either of which potentially affects consumption levels and volatility. This article evaluates the program impact with respect to consumption outcomes. In particular, it identifies the channel of impact through which improved property rights affect consumption volatility. We find that land certification increases consumption levels for rural households, but also consumption volatility for a subgroup of households identified by an instrument. We show that the certification program affects consumption outcomes of this subgroup through, presumably more risky, credit-based agricultural investment at the intensive margin. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Commentary :
We would like to express our gratitude to the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank as well as the German Research Foundation for funding this research. We also thank seminar participants at the World Bank's Annual Research Conference on Land and Poverty 2013 for comments. Furthermore, this research benefited from seminal discussions with Matthias Heinz and Heiner Schumacher from the Goethe-University in Frankfurt and Markus Frolich and Andreas Landmann from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Finally, we thank two anonymous referees for inspiring comments which helped to substantially improve the article.
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