Land policy and the urban land market in Zambia : property rights, transaction costs, and institutional change

摘要

This study examines, comparatively, the effects of Zambia's post-colonial (1975 and 1995) land policy reforms on the urban land market transactions. It focuses on land delivery, land transfer and exchange, and land valuation and pricing. The central thesis of the study is that land policy reforms matter even for the urban land market. Proceeding from this premise, the study conceptualises the effects of land policy on the land market as one set of institutions (namely, land policy reforms) modifying or radically restructuring (and, hence, impacting on) the other set of institutions (viz. property rights and the land market generally). Grounded in the new institutional economics approach, the conceptual framework focuses on property rights, transaction costs and institutional change. The philosophical framework is post-positivist. Methodologically, the research design is largely qualitative and employs a multiple data collection and analysis strategy. Central to this methodological approach are the concepts of critical multiplism and triangulation. The overall research findings suggest, overwhelmingly, that land policy reforms matter to urban land market transactions. More specifically, the study finds that, in so far as land delivery is concerned, both the 1975 and 1995 reforms had a similar detrimental impact. However, their effects differed markedly in specific areas with regard to land transfer and exchange, on the one hand, and land valuation and pricing, on the other. In patticular, the latter reforms were less pernicious than the former. Consequently, the study recommends land policy reforms that minimise the policy-generated detrimental effects identified in the land market operations. The effects in question naturally revolve around property rights and transaction costs.