Customary Land Conversion and the Formation of the African City

Picard, Pierre M. ; Selod, Harris

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: URBANIZATION;    LAND MARKET;    PROPERTY RIGHTS;    MARKET FAILURE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9192
RP-ID  :  WPS9192

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

As cities grow and spatially expand,agricultural land is converted into residential land. Inmany developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa,this process is accompanied by a change in land tenure,whereby plots held under traditional customary arrangementsare sold to new urban residents, possibly with formalproperty rights. This paper studies joint land-use andland-tenure conversion in an urban economics model in whichintermediaries purchase agricultural land from customaryowners and attempt to transform it into residential plotswith statutory property rights. The spatial equilibriumincludes a mix of land uses and rights where statutory andnon-statutory residential plots coexist with customary landthat is mainly used for agriculture. Because customaryownership is subject to uncertainty (because of tenureinsecurity), the conversion process includes a potentialinformation asymmetry between customary owners andintermediaries. The analysis shows that a market failure mayemerge whereby some customary owners prefer to continuefarming their land rather than participate in the urbanresidential land market, which results in a city that is toosmall. Empirical analysis using Malian data validates thekey features of the model captured by land price gradients,as well as the ranking and the variance of land prices, andis suggestive of the presence of information asymmetry.