Does Land Titling Improve Agricultural Productivity?: Evidence from Rural Cambodia

This study verifies whether the hypothesis of the positive causal relationship between land titling and agricultural productivity works in rural Cambodia. The effects of land titling may suffer from simultaneous causality bias, which can be partly solved by instrumental variable estimation. It uses the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES) parcel-level data surveyed from January 2014 until December 2014. The findings show that the effects of land titling on agricultural productivity are insignificant when village and household fixed effects control it. Land titling does not lead to increased use of inputs for agricultural production. But, it only slightly impacts total debt, not monthly interest rates. The conjecturable reason is that the land title itself affects slightly their debts but those are not invested in their land through agricultural inputs due to lack of credit accessibility. Furthermore, social customs and norms in rural Cambodia may replace the role of land titling.