Land Tenure Security and Investment Incentives: Puzzling Evidence from Burkina Faso

On the basis of original data collected in Burkina Faso, the paper seeks to determine whether increased land tenure security has a positive effect on agricultural investments, and land improvements in particular. The test is conducted by carefully controlling for possible endogeneity of tenure security. The paper concludes that, when the effect of investment on tenure security is taken into account, the presumed effect of the latter on the former variable simply disappears.