Property Rights, Political Connections, and Corporate Investment

Despite the substantial literature on rural land property rights, studies on urban land property rights are rare. Here, we study the impact of an urban land titling program on firm investment. We find that this program leads to an increased investment rate for titling firms, but that this positive effect only holds for politically-connected firms. These effects are likely causal: they are more pronounced for those firms more likely to benefit from property rights strengthening; connected titling firms experienced fewer disputes than non-connected titling firms after the program; and the results remain robust when using instrumental variable estimation