Market power and voluntary land redistribution

Inequality in land ownership remains a major issue in many developing countries, such as Brazil, Colombia, and South Africa. Donors advocate a new model of "willing-buyer/willing-seller\", market-led land redistribution, but actual redistribution has fallen short of expectations. Little effort has been made so far to formalize the obstacles to market-led land redistribution. In this paper, we show that oligopolistic owner-producers may resist land sales to poorer candidate-buyers not only because they have a lower willingness to pay for land but also because the entry of poorer entrants threatens tacit collusion.