Poor rural land property rights as a manifestation of urban bias

Though poor agricultural land property rights are typical constraints thatmany peasants in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have faced since independence,little has been done to explain their persistence. I will first discuss the socalled evolutionary theory of property right (ETPR), which stipulates thatland property rights evolve as an afficient response to the economic environment. The empirical evidence suggests that the policies adopted by Africanregimes are actually in sharp contrast to what the ETPR predicts. I will thenpresent a simple political economy model with three major assumptions thatare commonly observed in SSA countries: (1) de jure political power belongsto the urban elite, (2) urban unrest is a source of threat to the elite and (3)a dual economy with urban and rural sector side by side. Major predictionof the model is that, in such political and economic environment, we observepoor land property rights if there is low level of urbanization and/or largegap between rural and urban wages, which actually are features of many SSAcountries.