Research

While tenure security is essential to effective land management, there is little empirical evidence on its environmental impact. We show that improving tenure security through cadastre survey and land registry reduces agricultural fires. Exploiting the staggered rollout of the Hellenic Cadastre program across Greece from 2014 to 2019, we find those regions covered by the mandatory land registry witnessed a decline in agriculture fire incidences by 17 percent and burned areas by 38 percent. The land registry is accompanied by large increases in farming areas, investments, and fire suppression equipment, along with less stubble burning. The evidence suggests improved tenure security incentivizes landowners to exert larger fire-suppression efforts to protect land-attached investments, and to practice more long-term oriented land management.

presented at 

INRAE Université Paric-Saclay, 57th Annual Conference of the Canadian Economic Association, Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics, North America Summer Meeting Econometric Society, Institutional and Organization Economics Academy Workshop

The strict family settlement was a legal conveyance used by the British aristocracy to preserve the family estate for future generations. This study uses longitudinal demographic data from the British Peerage to empirically assess the impact of a father's involvement in the settlement of the estate on his heir's choice of spouse. The analysis shows that when the father was involved an heir was 5% more likely to marry outside the aristocracy, and 19% less likely to marry a socially equal or higher-ranking spouse, compared to heirs who arranged the settlements on their own. Further examination of family size and the welfare of siblings indicates that the diminished marital prospects of these heirs was largely due to a wealth transfer to siblings through the strict family settlement. This redistribution of family wealth reduced the heir's financial attractiveness, underscoring the effects of intra-family wealth distribution on the heir’s position in the marriage market.

presented at 

University of Auckland, 59th Annual Conference of the Canadian Economic Association, Brown Bag at Simon Fraser University

This paper questions the role of land property rights in coping with heat damage in agriculture. Taking advantage of a staggered cadastral reform that occurred in Greece between 2011 and 2019, we show that farmers having received the reform virtually offset all of the crucial effects of abnormal heat exposure on crop yields. This pattern is consistent with our results indicating that farmers receiving better land property rights switch from land-extensification (i.e., adjustment of farmland area) to land-intensification strategies (i.e., adjustment of other inputs), ultimately reducing heat damage on crop yields. Our preferred estimates indicate that farmers receiving better land property rights reduce crop area expansion by at least seventy percent in face of abnormal heat exposure (compared to a no-reform situation). At the same time, they increase their utilization of machinery by point one percent respectively -while they reduce it by one percent when they do not receive the reform. These results underline the important role of institutions in encouraging our societies to adapt to climate change.