Ziade Hailu, Isaac N. Nkote and John C. Munene
The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether enforceability mediates the relationship between property rights and investment in housing, using data from land…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether enforceability mediates the relationship between property rights and investment in housing, using data from land formalization project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was cross-sectional in design; data were collected from a sample of 210 households that benefited from the recent Addis Ababa city land and buildings formalization project. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the goodness-of-fit of the latent structures underlying the constructs. Mediation was tested using the Baron and Kenny steps, combined with bootstrapping technique. Robustness of results was checked.
Findings
The results indicate statistically significant mediation effect of contract enforcement. However, the mediation is partial, there is still a substantial direct effect of security of property rights on investment.
Practical implications
Any initiative to land formalization projects needs to consider contract enforcement environment, as presence and size of property rights effects largely depend on whether those rights are properly enforced.
Originality/value
This is the first study that conceptualizes the mediating effect of contract enforcement on the relationship between property rights and investment from an African country perspective.
Details
Keywords
This study aims to empirically test the variation in household assets and the incidence of child labour using data from Ethiopia.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to empirically test the variation in household assets and the incidence of child labour using data from Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was cross-sectional in design and used a sample of 3,500 observations (children aged 5–17 years) collected from 2,231 households in the rural and urban areas of Amhara and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' regions in Ethiopia. The logistic regression model was used to estimate the extent to which predictor variables are associated with the incidence of child labour.
Findings
The results indicate statistically significant child labour participation by those households who own assets than those who do not. The findings suggest that parents who own assets such as land, livestock and other endowments are likely to employ children in labour than the opposite, i.e. child labour increases with household asset ownership. However, this study did not investigate child labour response to wealth increment at the individual household level.
Practical implications
Any initiative to reduce child labour needs to be accompanied by parental awareness and compulsory schooling as one of the key policy tools.
Originality/value
This is one of those studies that question the poverty assumption as a cause of child labour and suggests parental selfishness playing a role in accentuating child labour.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the provision of formal land and building rights provides incentives to poor households to invest in their property in urban…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the provision of formal land and building rights provides incentives to poor households to invest in their property in urban Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
To test the hypothesis a natural quasi-experimental design was employed. Data were collected from a random sample of 210 households in a land formalization project and 190 households in a control group in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To control for selection bias propensity score matching was used to estimate group differences.
Findings
The beneficiary group reported a higher investment level than did the control group. Households in the beneficiary group are statistically more likely to invest in new structures and housing maintenance, yet these effects are modest.
Practical implications
Governments, donors, and land administration officials may use these findings to address contextual issues that need deliberate interventions to make formalization projects achieve its goals.
Originality/value
Property rights research is preoccupied with changes in land rights and its response to investment in agricultural sector. The paper contributes to the limited literature dealing with property rights literature on urban setting. Moreover, empirical research has been hampered by the problem of causality and endogeneity while the study is designed in such a way to respond to the selection problem utilizing a natural experiment.