Recordation Vs Registration Assessing Land Titling in a Quasi-experimental Context

Abstract: Public registries are a fundamental institution that allow impersonal exchange to develop. There exist at least two main variations of this institution in western countries: the recordation system and the registration system. In the legal and economic scholarship it is somehow common wisdom to assume that recordation is less effective than registration in avoiding title uncertainty. Because of this, the thousands of reform and land titling programs sponsored by International Developing Agencies have promoted the development of registration systems. However, there is no empirical test so far that can credibly show why the registration system is superior to the recording system in any measure relevant for development. We provide such evidence by exploiting a natural experiment in the north-east Italian provinces which until WWI belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire and, as such, have implemented and maintained the registration system in place.