CONCLUSION
The main contribution of this paper is to disentangle the issue concerning which
dimensions of land rights, among land security, tradability and pledgeability, affect agricultural productivity and other farm activities. Having access to the data corresponding to a unique land
property titling in Thailand, where the given title only guarantees land right security, allows a
very limited access to credit, and prohibits any land sale; I am able to empirically investigate the
impact of a single dimension of land rights, namely ownership security, on agricultural
outcomes. In addition, the nature and the history of the programme allow me to construct
instrumental variables to circumvent the potential endogeneity of land rights. Following results
are found. Granting partial ownership increases (1) the productivity of second rice, which largely
depends on human effort and investment, but not of major rice, which relies more on exogenous
precipitation and geographical conditions, (2) the intensity of land use, measured by multiple
cropping index, and leads to (3) changes in the pattern of land use illustrated by a reduction in
unused land, a rise in the proportion of land devoted to paddy fields, and a fall in the proportion
of land devoted to permanent trees that could act as an informal claim for land ownership, (4) an
increase in land-related investment (investment in hydrated lime) but not other types of nonland-
related investment, (5) better soil quality reflected in the reduction of soil acidity. The
results suggest that the security dimension of land rights, which assures the holders of being rewarded for incurring costs of effort, investment, and the change in pattern of land use, alone,
can play an important role in giving incentive and improving agricultural productivity and other
farm activities.