NEWS: New research on property rights
- PRIME
- Sep 11, 2015
- 2 min read
PRIME is pleased to announce the launch of a new research project that will be building on our current research on property rights and economic development. The new project is being done in partnership with the University of Queensland (Australia) and will look at the relationship between the types of land ownership and wellbeing.
In Cambodia, property is considered to have "hard title" if the ownership has been registered and recognised by the national government, while "soft title" exists when ownership is recognised by the local community but there is no registration with the national government. Following the destruction caused by the Khmer Rouge, where private land ownership was abolished and all land titles destroyed, people began to rebuild systems of property rights based around community recognition of ownership. The process of re-introducing a national register of property ownership has taken a long time, and is still far from finished. The co-existence of these two different types of property recognition provides a natural experiment, where we can compare and contrast the consequences from each system.
In particular, this new project will aim to distinguish between the financial impact and the emotional impact of switching from soft to hard title.
This project is part of a larger research agenda lead by Professor Paul Frijters from the School of Economics at the University of Queensland, which is aiming to understand "how socio-economic variables affect the human life experience, and the 'unanswerable' economic mysteries of life". That question has lead Professor Frijters on a journey from Tajikistan to Turkey and many places between as he strives to unlock the secrets of human happiness.
Plenty of previous research has already established that greater wealth generally leads to higher levels of reported happiness. Further, we know that more secure land title is linked to higher land prices, and therefore greater wealth for the land owner, so it would be unsurprising (and not very interesting) to simply observe the link between land title and happiness. But what is interesting is to discover whether more secure land title brings higher levels of reported happiness, even after factoring in the wealth effect.
Since PRIME already has a research project looking at the economic value of secure property rights, we are uniquely placed to be able to provide the Australian researchers with the data they need to be able to conduct their analysis, interpret the results, and draw conclusions. In addition to answering the happiness question, our PRIME researchers also hope to uncover more information about the perceived benefits and costs of land registration, so that we may be able to find ways to improve the system for everybody.
If you have an interest in this (or any other) of our research projects then you can contact us to share your thoughts, or you might like to consider applying for a research internship.
###
コメント