From the ground up: How land rights drive jobs and growth

Digital technology transformed how land rights can be securely documented, transferred, and used, expanding opportunities for farmers and entrepreneurs seeking access credit markets. Yet adoption remains uneven: digital registries are near universal in OECD and many ECA countries, but remain nascent, partial, or non-existent elsewhere.

Regulatory reform to put technology to use under local conditions is increasingly needed. Building on research, the Business Ready (B-READY) indicators provide policymakers with a long-term vision and a yardstick to measure progress at shorter intervals.
 

Measuring land institutions for investment and job creation

Land registries support investment and job creation only when they can be trusted and are affordable to use. Evidence points to four features that determine whether land institutions enable markets or constrain them.

1. Broad coverage and legal safeguards are essential. Registries that cover only private land or rely on costly paper-based procedures risk widening inequality and encourage informal occupation of land. Digital recording and mapping of existing rights on public and private land help establish who holds which rights, while electronic signatures and due process requirements before registry changes protect users against arbitrary loss. These features reduce disputes and create the transaction volume needed to keep average registration cost low.
   
   
2. Land systems must be interoperable. Interoperability with digital IDs enables parties to authenticate transactions online, while links with mortgage registries and courts strengthen enforceability. Connecting land registries to annual property taxes helps keep records current at low cost.
   
   
3. Access to information shapes land use decisions. When registry data, including transaction prices, are available in machine-readable formats without violating privacy, entrepreneurs can make better land investment decisions. Transparent information also allows local governments to align land valuations with market prices, capturing increases in land values generated by public investment.
   
   
4. Restrictions on transferability matter. While some regulations addressing market power may be justified, restrictions that once served historical purposes may no longer be effective—or may be better addressed through other policy instruments.

In countries where land administration lies at sub-national levels, an index aggregating these four features can help benchmark performance, guide reform, and inform the allocation of sub-national lending of performance-based grants, linking better land governance directly to incentives.
 

Unlocking structural transformation

When land systems incorporate these features, they can foster structural transformation by enabling land to move toward more productive uses and people toward better jobs.

Evidence shows that even low-productivity farmers who could earn a much better livelihood outside agriculture will not exit farming or enter into long-term contracts if land rights are undocumented, non-transferable, or costly to register.

• In China, Ethiopia, and Mexico, registering land use rights combined with easing transfer restrictions improved agricultural productivity and market operation by enabling leasing, longer-term investment, and land consolidation.
  
  

Similarly, land registration increases credit access only where charge registration and enforcement are possible at low cost.

• In India, the SVAMITA scheme, a nation-wide village land registration, increased access to credit only where digital charge creation and foreclosure were legal.

The reliability of registry information and the cost of accessing it, rather than the mere existence of a registry, are thus key variables.

Land institutions can also shape the impact of public investment.
 

• In Rwanda, large irrigation schemes doubled productivity for farmers who irrigated but had at least 25% less impact where market frictions prevented farmers to reallocate their land to those who could use irrigation most effectively.
   

Using land information to improve agricultural policy delivery

The same features that allow land systems to enable mobility across sectors can shape how governments use land registries to better target support and respond to risks faced by farmers.

Many countries use fertilizer subsidies to boost productivity, often through physical delivery. Digital registries make it possible to reduce leakage and shift toward delivery models that give farmers greater choice over input’s types and quantities. This addresses traditional programs’ inefficiencies and was effective in Mozambique and, during wartime, in Ukraine.

Agricultural activity also frequently generates harmful externalities, including air pollution from crop burning, greenhouse gas emissions from flooded rice cultivation, and deforestation driven by expansion into agronomically marginal areas. Georeferenced farmer registries enable routine use of remote sensing to monitor such practices and, when public transfers are conditioned on monitoring results, can be highly effective at curbing harmful behavior. These systems also help establish traceability that allows farmers to access global value chains, as with beef and soy in Brazil, and coffee in Cote d’Ivoire and Uganda.
 

Building knowledge to inform land policies

These examples show how land registry systems—when trusted, interoperable, and easy to use— can support structural transformation, reduce inefficiencies, and help governments better target support to farmers.

The Land Research Conference (April 29–May 1) will bring together researchers and policymakers to share evidence, challenges, and reform experiences from across the globe.  A keynote by Economics Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu, on “Land, Labor, and Economic Development” will explore the broader implications of the distribution of productive assets for economic development.