Also worth remembering the host of violence prevention programs in northern Nigeria that USAID was funding

Thanks Will! I have also gotten the reasonable question "what does this paper do that Honig (2017,2022) doesn't?" Glad I've convinced you.

Big thanks to my supportive advisors, the various groups who funded this research, my wife, and one particularly fussy editor:

The field survey in Cote d’Ivoire process-traces three intermediate steps: (1) strong chiefs lead to more titles because Ivorian chiefs have an incentive to facilitate rather than impede; (2) chiefs capture land management and exclude the local out-group; and (3) chiefs benefit from this capture.

But households aren’t the only actors here; traditional chiefs either facilitate titling (if the state devolved land governance, meaning that chiefs can capture these institutions) or impede it (if titling remains centralized).

First, if farmland isn’t valuable enough (or if there are limited returns to the kind of agricultural investment that titling facilitates, like fertilizing land or planting trees), then households won’t bother to title.

Back to the question, I marshal 170,216 household-level observations of titling across 22 African countries from both the DHS and LSMS programs, along with a geospatial strategy to measure land values and a field survey in Cote d’Ivoire.

Control over land tenure can also act as a reservoir of authority for traditional elites—meaning that property rights are a crucial arena in which to test when traditional elites complement or substitute for the state.

First: why should you care about land titling? Some recent Nobel prizes suggest that good institutions are a necessary condition for economic development. Where the agricultural sector still employs many households, secure land tenure is the ‘institution’ that counts.

Abundant research says formalizing land ownership is good for households, and land titles are available on-demand through much of Africa. But the below figure shows both low take-up overall and high amounts of variation within states. What gives?

This looks really interesting!

Rubio said no children died? Add that to the pile of lies. At least Musk admitted “he gave zero fucks.”

And all this? For a bunch of AI-generated hallucinations and outright lies about “corruption” at USAID.

By the way, in the initial wave of AI-powered program cuts, Lewin, Rubio, and Musk pinballed between cutting production contracts, then restoring production while cutting shipping, then cutting shipping while restoring production, etc.

Starting production takes time, arranging shipping takes time, the shipping itself takes time. That was true before they fired everybody and its even more true now.

This means food goes undelivered. Delays pile up. Much of the world’s supply of ready to use therapeutic food (RUTF) is made in either Lubbock, TX or Rhode Island, far from where it is used.

But Rubio, Musk, and Jeremy Lewin fired single person at USAID who knew how this process works. There are a handful of contracts officers (high-level) and program assistants (entry level) left, but none of the core staff who do the work (i.e. save lives).