A “de Soto Effect” in Industry? Evidence from the Russian Federation
研究了加强土地权利能否减少金融摩擦并促进私人投资，利用俄罗斯地区政策差异和企业调查数据，发现私有土地权利有助于企业获得信贷和增加投资。
The strengthening of land rights has been proposed as a policy to reduce financial market frictions and promote private investment in low- and middle-income countries. But assessments of these potential effects have proven inconclusive. One reason may be that research has focused on actors that face difficulties accessing credit for reasons other than the security of land tenure. We explore the effect of greater tenure security in a setting in which non-land-related financial market frictions are apt to be mild—that is, among large urban industrial enterprises. Exploiting policy variation across Russian regions and firm-level survey data, we show that private land rights facilitate credit access and promote investment.