Land Rights and Economic Development: Evidence from Viet Nam

This paper examines the impact of a land reform in Viet Nam which gave households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit and mortgage their land-use rights. We expect this change to increase the incentives as well as the ability to undertake long-term investments on the part of households. Our difference-in-differences estimation strategy takes advantage of the variation across provinces in the issuance of land-use certificates needed to enforce these rights. Our results indicate that the additional land rights led to significant increases in the share of total area devoted to multi-year crops, as well as some increase in irrigation investment. These effects are stronger in areas which felt the impact of the land reform earlier.