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Land Consolidation Results from a Randomized Experiment Preliminary. Quy-Toan Do Trung Dang Le. The context. Vietnam moved from a centralized economy in 1986 Farmers become residual claimants in 1988 Land law of 1993: Land Use Certificates instituted. The question.
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Land ConsolidationResults from a Randomized Experiment Preliminary Quy-Toan Do Trung Dang Le
The context • Vietnam moved from a centralized economy in 1986 • Farmers become residual claimants in 1988 • Land law of 1993: Land Use Certificates instituted
The question • Land reallocation in 1988 based on equity • High levels of fragmentation • Market institutions in 1993 aimed at reducing fragmentation via market forces • Land consolidation did not happen spontaneously
Why? • Lack of information • Lack of coordination • Bureaucratic incentives • Transaction costs • Fragmentation is just optimal as it is
Methodological problems • Observational data are problematic: differences in land market activity, land market outcomes, or land right regimes can be due to (unobservable) factors that affect socio-economic outcomes • Comparing before and after change is also problematic: change in land governance usually comes with a lot of other changes that affect growth
Description of our intervention • End 2006 – beginning 2007: design of an intervention to trigger land consolidation • Three packages: • Information campaigns • Local cadres training • Combined package
Description (cont’d) • Sample universe: communes in the North in volunteering provinces that did NOT undertake land consolidation at the time of the intervention • Randomized allocation of the packages across four groups (3 treatments and one control group) • Communes are communes in the Vietnam Household Living Standards Study panel survey
Empirical methodology • Baseline data: VHLSS 2004 • Household survey: representative at province-level, and detailed agricultural module • Intervention: 2006-2007 • Follow-up data: Preliminary data from VHLSS 2008 • Household survey: panel structure at the commune-level (100%)
Empirical methodology (cont’d) • Quantitative impact evaluation: Yijt = a + Xijt b + cTj + d Yeart + g Tj*Yeart + uijt • Where Y is the outcome of interest • X is a vector of household characteristics • T is the treatment variable, Year is the year dummy variable • u is the error term (allowing for HH, commune FE)
Preliminary results • Summary statistics • Differences at baseline • Preliminary look at the results • Effect on land fragmentation • Effect on land area • Effect on agricultural production • Effect on income sources
Conclusion • The main contribution is methodological • Results are preliminary: no definitive conclusion to be drawn at this early stage