MYlandOURland · How Institutions Shape Culture: Survey and Experimental Evidence from a Large-Scale Land Tenure Reform Implemented as a Randomized Control Trial
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-09-01 → 2021-08-31
- EU contribution
- €158,122
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
How Institutions Shape Culture: Survey and Experimental Evidence from a Large-Scale Land Tenure Reform Implemented as a Randomized Control Trial
This project aims to isolate the causal effects of formal institutions on cultural variables that influence economic development, namely trust and cooperation with strangers, moral preferences, and social value orientation. In particular, I investigate how the passage from an informal system of collective use-rights into a formal system of individual property rights impacts on the aforementioned cultural variables in the context of a fieldwork study conducted in rural Benin. The reform I study was implemented ten years before my data collection took place following a randomized control-trial procedure across hundreds of Beninese villages. This, as in an experiment, makes possible to compare the effects of the reform on cultural variables by collecting behavioral and survey data from a sample of participants in "treated" villages selected to have the property rights reform implemented against "control" villages where no reform was implemented. Understanding how different institutional arrangements affect these outcomes which are considered key drivers of economic growth is important because, with this knowledge, policy- and rule-makers can better design institutions that facilitate market exchange and promote social welfare. The overall objective is to improve our understanding of how institutions affect culture in order to provide useful information that can be exploited during the process of institutional change.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project aims to isolate the causal effects of formal institutions (mainly, laws and regulations) on cultural variables that influence economic development, such as trust, cooperation, social value orientation, competitiveness, thriftiness, and work ethics, in order to better understand how to design institutions that facilitate market exchange. The applicant will conduct surveys and lab-in-the-field experiments to collect data on these cultural variables in several villages in Benin, West Africa, where a major reform consisting in the formalization of property rights over land was implemented in hundreds of rural villages between 2006 and 2011. The effects of this institutional reform on culture will be estimated by comparing data collected in villages affected by the reform with data from villages where no land rights formalization took place. Identification is based on the randomization process characterizing the selection of villages where the reform took place: the project studies the first – and so far unique – case of land tenure reform implemented as a large-scale randomized control-trial. Given the unique identification strategy that overcomes most of the limitations characterizing previous studies, the use of state-of-the-art methodologies, and an interdisciplinary approach investigating the problem through the prism of gender equality, results will determine important advances in the existing knowledge regarding the optimal design of institutions. These outcomes will directly benefit low- and medium-income countries that are implementing land tenure reforms by suggesting ways to improve the design of new institutions. Furthermore, important benefits deriving from this project will be shared also by western societies, since findings will improve the effectiveness of the resources invested in development aids, and since the results will advance existing knowledge regarding the process and consequences of institutional change.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA · BarcelonaCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union