The dilemma of property rights and indigenous institutional arrangements for common resources governance in China

Traditionally, property rights have been seen as an efficient means of optimizing the allocation of common resources. The arrangement of property rights, however, has historically led to a number of social, economic and ecological issues. Herders living in China are currently exploring collective grazing partnerships as they seek to maintain balance between ecological protection and livelihood development in the process of grassland governance. For the purposes of this study, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the property rights dilemma, offering possible solutions for indigenous institutional arrangements as exemplified in six typical cases. We assert that (1) stakeholders should respect local culture by ensuring the participation of herders in policymaking, (2) the use of fences for the demarcation of property rights is ineffective and often serves as a catalyst for the destruction and degradation of grassland ecosystems, and (3) herders’ use of collective action techniques should be reinvented with the support of state policy.     

Intermediate levels of property rights and the emerging housing market in Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam

Vietnam introduced a Policy of Renovation (‘Doi Moi’ Policy) to restructure the economy in 1986. Under this policy, the Land Use Right Certificate was introduced as a form of tenure for agricultural land and urban land, according to the Land Laws of 1987 and 1993, respectively. However, by 2001, most properties and/or land in Vietnam still did not have a legal title. Although Vietnam's land reforms in the 1990s provided some of the weakest private rights among the transition countries, big cities like Ho Chi Minh City are presently homes to thriving housing markets. Transactions of ‘property without a physical entity and legal title’ in the real estate market show how property ownership can be formed in order to operate within different institutional contexts. This paper highlights that ‘intermediate levels of property rights’ are the driving forces behind the thriving housing market in Ho Chi Minh City.     

Whose scarcity? Whose property? The case of water in western India

Water scarcity is usually portrayed in absolute or volumetric terms. But do most analyses of scarcity focus on how the ‘problem’ of scarcity is constructed, the need to disaggregate users and their entitlements and the imperative to look at the politics of distribution and technology choice within a frame of political economy? By taking the case of water scarcity in Kutch, western India which is supposed to benefit from the controversial Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project (SSP), the paper demonstrates how scarcity has emerged as a ‘meta-narrative’ that justifies controversial schemes such as large dams, allows for simplistic portrayals of property rights and resource conflicts and also ignores the cultural and symbolic dimensions of resources such as water. Moreover, water scarcity tends to be naturalised and its anthropogenic dimensions are whitewashed. It is thus necessary to distinguish between the biophysical aspects of scarcity that are lived and experienced differently by different people and its ‘constructed’ aspects. The paper draws on a wide range of conceptual approaches such as political ecology, common property resource theory and post-institutional approaches to highlight that scarcity is not a natural condition. Instead, it is usually socially mediated and the result of socio-political and institutional processes. It also argues that while institutional perspectives have played in a key role in moving away from alarmist portrayals of scarcity and property rights by demonstrating how local people can manage and live with scarcity, they need to be complemented by analyses that locate property rights within wider historical, cultural and socio-political processes that combine both discursive and materialist analyses.     

Delineation of property rights as institutional foundations for urban land markets in transition

This paper aims to critically reflect on establishing the new frameworks for land markets and urban land development processes in countries in transition. Based on the doctrine of the so-called ‘property rights’ school, land and property ownership has long been identified as a prerequisite for economic development. The common advice to countries in transition creating new frameworks for land markets was to assign and register property rights. The aim of this paper is to discuss the significance of the delineation of property rights, which for urban land development processes and outcomes falls mainly within the remit of land use regulations. In this paper the concept of property rights regime and its characteristics is developed in order to discuss the delineation of property rights and their relationship with urban land development process and its outcome. Process of land development is conceptualized depending on land ownership (private or public), and the role of the owner in the planning process. The outcome is discussed based on the morphological results and the provision of urban infrastructure. On the basis of empirical experience from transition period in Poland it is argued that the emphasis on private property rights in the absence of the institutional foundations of urban land market under capitalism was bound to produce urban problems. First, the new institutional foundation for urban land market was introduced subsequent to dynamic of emerging real estate market, and viable markets existed despite unsolved question of restitution of property rights. Second, the subsequent delineation of property rights is clearly linked to processes of urban land development, which follow the line of development without planning. It can also be related to the morphological results of urban development like the haphazard location of investments and lack of adequate approach to deal with the provision of urban infrastructure.     

Impact of formalisation of property rights in informal settlements: Evidence from Dar es Salaam city

This paper aims to study the responsiveness of the informal property market and management systems towards the introduction of land registration for informal settlements in Tanzania. City governments are increasingly recognising the need to strengthen legal rights for the urban poor as a means to bring them more effectively into the urban economy and ensure better provision of water, sanitation and other primary services. The research focuses on Tanzania and in particular two case studies within Dar es Salaam. The findings of the work suggest that the introduction of residential licenses whilst potentially assisting in creating legal certainty has not resulted in the financial sector accepting them as full security against loans. Accessing credit by the poor however has not yet been fully realised resulting in some further hurdles for the financial sector to overcome. Finally, and of some significance is the registration of property in the informal settlements has provided the opportunity of formal property transactions within these settlements.     

The case for property investment and the implications of a unitized property market

Abstract

It is well known that direct property investment has often provided a more attractive risk/return profile than gilts and yet it enjoys a comparatively small role in institutional portfolios. This paper begins by updating and confirming that position. It then considers why this should be the case and poses the question of whether the development of a unitized property market might alter institutions’ perceptions of property as an investment in such a way as to increase its portfolio importance.

Section 2 discusses the weighting attached to property in recent years and section 3 discusses the conventional methods of risk/return analysis which present property in a favourable light. The paper then asks why the weighting should be so low and begins (section 4) by looking at arguments that conventional methods of risk/return analysis are misleading when applied to property, leading to an overstatement of return and an underestimate of risk. If institutions are aware of these defects they may adjust their perceptions of risk/return appropriately. We are not, however, persuaded that this is the whole of the explanation. In section 5 we consider other disadvantages or costs of direct property investment which go unrecorded by conventional measures of risk but which might be important to institutions. We confirm there are peculiarities attaching to direct property investment but that these cannot wholly explain the high return that institutions seem to need to induce them to hold only a small proportion of their portfolio in property. We are left, therefore, with the conclusion that institutions’ perceptions of the merits of property investment are a significant factor. Thus, in section 6, we try to identify ways in which an active market in unitized property might encourage institutions to hold larger property portfolios in future.     

The demand for education: The impacts of good schools on property values in Brisbane,Australia

The demand for education is partly revealed by a higher demand for properties around good schools, which has been the basis for a number of empirical studies. This research attempts to explore the nexus of school quality and the property market when school ranking is clearly available to the public. The spatial hedonic property valuation method was employed to analyze selected Brisbane public (state) and private schools consisting of those with high, middle and low ranking in terms of average student academic school performance. The results imply the capitalization of school values in both property and rental prices. The research also demonstrates the spillover impacts of school development. Such impacts are higher in comparison to previous studies, which are supported by the average school performance considered in individual assessments. The results of this study can be a valuable input into school policy reforms. (JEL: H23, I20, I28, R21)     

Property rights and housing prices: An empirical study of small property rights housing in Shenzhen,China

Small Property Rights Housing (SPRH) is an important part of informal housing in China. SPRH is defined as housing developed with collective land ownership that is then sold to outside homebuyers such as non-indigenous villagers. This housing practice is legally forbidden and comes without formal titles. SPRH is popular in big Chinese cities where formal housing prices are constantly rising and increasingly unaffordable for many urban residents. However, research on SPRH is rare. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects (or the lack thereof) of de-jure property rights on housing prices by using the empirical case of Shenzhen where SPRH and FPRH estates constitute the main sources of urban housing for its residents. We collected both SPRH and formal Full Property Right Housing (FPRH) data in the Shenzhen housing market and adopted the Boundary Fixed Effect method and matching strategy to mitigate the bias caused by unobservable location and neighborhood factors. This empirical study shows that the lack of de-jure property rights has negative and significant effects on housing prices. The average housing price for SPRH apartments is, ceteris paribus, 52.82% lower than for formal FPRH apartments. Also, the premium of property rights varies across two administrative regions with different locations and economic environments, and the premium decreases as the age of the building increases.     

Time to completion in the Lagos commercial real estate market: an examination of institutional effects

This study explores how institutions affect the process of investment and the time it takes to buy and sell commercial property in Lagos, Nigeria. We isolate institutional factors that impact transaction efficiency and provide a snapshot of the process with average transaction times for the largest commercial real estate market in the most populous country in Africa. This study adopts a qualitative approach and relies on information collected from semi-structured interviews with 36 senior level individuals active in the Lagos commercial real estate market. Among our findings, we note the commercial real estate transaction process is divided into seven distinct stages and the average time to complete an acquisition across all stages (all property types) is 306 days. Title registration/perfection stage takes the longest time (around 132 days) and represents a significant risk to investors. We argue this is a consequence of imperfections in the formal institutions of title registration.     

Redefining property rights over collective land in the urban redevelopment of Shenzhen,China

Urban development in China is based on two types of land ownership, namely, state land owned by states and collective land owned by village collectives. Legally speaking, urban development must be based on state land. In practice, informal development based on collective land has played important roles in the rapid urbanization process over the past decades. Nonetheless, the vague property rights over collective land have led to inferior and suboptimal development outcomes in expansive urban areas. The redevelopment of collective land has become an important means to sustain urban development in an ongoing urbanization process. By adopting theoretical perspectives from New Institutional Economics, this study presents an integrated conceptual framework on the institutional arrangements of land property rights and transaction costs to understand the changes in land policies and their institutional implications for the redevelopment of collective land in Shenzhen, China. The findings reveal that the new policies have redefined the relationship among the government, village collectives, and real estate developers as well as their property rights over collective land. The change of institutional arrangements in land property rights has significantly reduced the transaction costs in the redevelopment process and effectively promoted land redevelopment activities.     

Securing land and property rights in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of local institutions

Central governments have neither the capacity nor the local knowledge to implement a just, large-scale national land registration system. Support to local institutions to undertake intermediate forms of land registration has been shown to be far more effective in many places—although these need careful checks on abuses by powerful local (and external) interests, measures to limit disputes (too many of which can overwhelm any institution) and measures to ensure that the needs of those with the least power – typically women, migrants, tenants and pastoralists – are given due weight. These locally grounded systems can also provide the foundation for more formal registration systems, as needs and government capacities develop. Even if there are the funds and the institutional capacity to provide formal land title registration to everyone in ways that are fair and that recognize local diversity and complexity, and could manage disputes, this may often not be needed. For the vast majority of people, cheaper, simpler, locally grounded systems of rights registration can better meet their needs for secure tenure.     

Patterns of revenue distribution in rural residential land consolidation in contemporary China: The perspective of property rights delineation

Rural residential land consolidation (RRLC) in contemporary China refers to activities related to the replanning and reallocation of rural residential land to construct new rural residences, to increase land-use efficiency and to improve rural amenities in the context of rural revitalization. The objective of this study is to elucidate the patterns of revenue distribution in RRLC by addressing the following questions. Given incomplete and ambiguous formal rules in China, how can rural land property rights be delineated to distribute and coordinate interests among stakeholders in RRLC? Furthermore, what are the factors that determine the delineation of rural land property rights to distribute land revenue? A theoretical framework for the delineation of rural land property rights is developed from the perspectives of the institutional environment, governance and resource allocation. A comparative analysis of two typical cases of RRLC in contemporary China is conducted to support the research hypotheses. This study finds that bargaining power is the fundamental determinant of delineating rural land property rights to distribute revenue in RRLC. Furthermore, intergovernmental competition motivates the local government to fully deploy strong bargaining power, while concerns about social stability provide some constraints. A strong capability for collective action reinforces the bargaining power of rural households. This study provides new insights into the delineation of rural land property rights and subsequent revenue distribution based on distinctive institutional settings and RRLC in China, enriching the theoretical and empirical findings in the property rights school. Policy recommendations on revenue sharing of RRLC are proposed accordingly.     

Adjusting policy to institutional,cultural and biophysical context conditions: The case of conservation banking in California

This paper examines the political construction of a policy instrument for matching particular institutional, biophysical and cultural context conditions in a social–ecological system, using the case of conservation banking in California as an example. The guiding research question is: How is policy design negotiated between various actors on its way from early formulation of ideas and principles to an accepted policy solution on a state or national level? The underlying assumption is that in order for a policy instrument to be implemented, it has to be adjusted to various context conditions. That is, it has to become accepted by affected actors associated with the institutional framework, and it has to gain local validity for implementation by actors related to a particular ecological and cultural context. We assume that ideas about policy adjustments are not only functionalistic questions determined for example by the materiality of the resource it governs, but are constructed and politically negotiated because these ideas may differ among the mental models of the associated actors. These actors are stakeholders affiliated with the policy process, i.e. authorities, public and private organizations, interest groups, firms or think tanks dealing with, or being shaped by, the policy at different stages of its development.As a result certain context conditions and related concerns such as institutional interplay or match to ecological particularities become inscribed in policy design as an outcome of power struggles, values, and interests. These in turn may vary at different stages of policy development and implementation. Each time the instrument is transferred in a new setting it is likely that the incipient policy design may be opened-up and begin a mutual adjustment process among the newly concerned actors. Thus, such policy developments are not immutable but are dynamic. In this paper, the creation of fit for policies on conservation banking to the issue of species protection in the State of California and later to the U.S. environmental governance domain, are analyzed to understand the instrument's emergence and development toward an established policy solution. The focus is on the negotiation processes among the enrolled actors and their strategies for matching the instrument to certain institutional, cultural and ecological context conditions on different scales. Changes in policy design, its underlying influences, actors’ interests, conflicts and perceived effects are identified, respectively.     

Un-forgetting walls by lines on maps: A case study on property rights,cadastral mapping,and the landscape of the Kowloon Walled City

This paper demonstrates that the framing of post-war Kowloon Walled City through photos has been dominated by the maps commonly used to represent this Chinese enclave in colonial Hong Kong as a place. Inspired by and extending Wylie’s (2009) argument that emptiness and presence are equally important, this paper uses basic GIS techniques and hitherto unpublished archival materials to help (a) argues that the colonial government’s mindset of clearly defining the spatial boundary of the city, which is a subtle admission of an officially and diplomatically denied otherness in ownership, created the city as a quasi-cadastral unit; and (b) explains how this shaped the framing of the landscape of the city by promoting investment and trade in high-rise housing development units. The government did not destroy its walls. When these were physically destroyed, it did not ignore the walls’ original alignments but treated the city as a planning unit, as if they still existed.     

On the origins of tourist urbanisation in Greece: Land speculation and property market (in)efficiency

This paper places issues of land speculation and property market efficiency within the limited geographical context of a tourist-agglomeration development process in the island of Rhodes, Greece. The study is based mainly on the elaboration of diachronic cadastral data, covering the period from the very beginning of the tourism development in what as of a formerly an agricultural area, until its establishment as an international mass tourist destination. The economic and financial dimensions of land speculation on market efficiency are explored, through a socio-economic perspective. Land property ownership structures, state policies and bank financing practices have produced synergies that encouraged land speculation, with ambivalent effects on space, property markets and tourist activities. Finally, it is argued that land speculation may be regarded as a socially embedded rational action, which leads to an overall inefficient land market.     

Extra-legal land market dynamics on a Guatemalan agricultural frontier: Implications for neoliberal land policies

Neoliberal land policies such as land administration seek to improve property rights and the efficiency of land markets to boost rural economic production. Quantitative studies of pre-existing land markets can help planners to tailor these policies to local conditions. In this article we examine an extra-legal land market currently being modernized by a World Bank-sponsored land administration effort. Specifically, we use a hedonic-type revealed preference model and household survey data to estimate the factors affecting extra-legal land prices along an agricultural frontier in Petén, Guatemala. Our model indicates that land value is significantly affected by land attributes including location, tenure status, presence of water, distance to roads, and distance to landowners’ homes, and that land prices in the northwestern Petén are estimated to have risen on average 26.5% per year between 1977 and 2000. We contend that this rate of increase provides a strong incentive for colonists to speculate in land rather than invest in state sanctioned property rights. We conclude that if frontier development programs, such as land administration, are to become attractive to settlers in Petén and elsewhere, they must compete favorably with economic incentives associated with land speculation, or alternatively, target landowners who are not interested in playing the land market.     

The institutional drivers of sustainable landscapes: a case study of the ‘Mayan Zone’ in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Research on the dynamics of tropical forest land use and cover change (LUCC) has focused on the three scenarios: (1) deforestation/degradation; (2) settled, degraded areas in recovery, and (3) sparsely settled, expansive, intact forest. Through examination of a central Quintana Roo, Mexico case study we propose a fourth scenario of a ‘sustainable landscape’: an inhabited, productively used, forested landscape that nonetheless shows little change or net gains in forest cover over the last 25 years. We use Landsat images to demonstrate a low incidence of net deforestation, 0.01% for the 1984–2000 period, the lowest recorded deforestation rate for southeastern Mexico. Institutional innovations such as an agrarian reform process that established large common property forests for non-timber forest product extraction, and later innovations such as sustainable forest management institutions have driven the outcome of low net deforestation, added to multiple organizational processes that promote sustainable land use.     

Sharing property value losses: The spatial concentration of development rights as a way to limit urban sprawl

The examination of the literature on land value capturing and compensation shows that strategies based on the sharing of value losses deserve increased attention. This topic is relevant also with regards to the Swiss context of the study: following the entry into force of more stringent antisprawl provisions at the federal level, numerous peripheral municipalities must reduce the size of the designated building zones and withdraw development rights from landowners. Two municipal cases are presented: the first illustrates the difficulties currently faced by Swiss municipal authorities; the second shows a possible way of dealing with these difficulties. In this second case, a specific instrument that allows for the sharing of property value losses was implemented in the past. This instrument, which we will call the spatial concentration of development rights, is analyzed along with the conditions that made possible its successful implementation. The political and technical transferability of this instrument outside its original context is also addressed. The results show that the sharing of property value losses helps to deal with equity issues while being less demanding in terms of institutional change compared to the creation of a TDR system in Switzerland. Thus, the sharing of property value losses deserves being discussed as a suitable approach while implementing antisprawl policies in peripheral areas.     

Fertilizer subsidies and private market participation: the case of Kano State,Nigeria

This article estimates the effect of a fertilizer voucher program on farmer participation in the private fertilizer market in Nigeria. Using a double‐hurdle model (to address corner solution challenges with estimating input demand) and a control function approach (to account for the endogeneity of subsidized fertilizer acquired), the study finds evidence that receiving subsidized fertilizer in Kano, Nigeria increased both the probability and extent of participation in the private fertilizer market. Findings demonstrate that under certain circumstances, e.g., where input dealers’ links to farmer are weak; there could be significant gains from the temporary use of voucher programs to strengthen such links.     

The firm size,farm size,and transaction costs: the case of hazelnut farms in Turkey

This study analyzes the effects of transaction costs on the size of hazelnut farms in Turkey. The study finds that higher land slope and higher variance of rain, as transaction‐cost‐increasing natural effects, lead to smaller hazelnut land holdings. High slope and weather variation can increase the costs of monitoring the laborers, make moving inputs or output up and down harder, limit the use of machinery, and reduce contractual performance of labor contracts. For farm production functions, land is a complex input with measurable interactions with nature. Contrary to common production theory approaches that take natural properties of land as given, the study develops a production function that incorporates natural properties, such as, slope and rain variance. The study utilizes two separate data sets for the estimations. The first data set explores the characteristics of hazelnut farmers, while the second one analyzes the regional characteristics of hazelnut farms.