Gender-Differentiated Impacts of Tenure Insecurity on Agricultural Performance in Malawi's Customary Tenure Systems

Many African countries rely on sporadic land transfers from customary to statutory domains to attract investment and improve agricultural performance. Data from 15,000 smallholders and 800 estates in Malawi allow exploring the long-term effects of such a strategy. The results suggest that (i) most estates are less productive than smallholders; (ii) fear of land loss, although not exclusively due to estates, is associated with a 12 percent productivity loss for females, which is large enough to finance a low-cost tenure regularization program; and (iii) failure to collect realistic land rents implies public revenue losses of up to US$50 million per year.


Gender-Differentiated Impacts of Tenure Insecurity on Agricultural
Performance in Malawi's Customary Tenure Systems Klaus Deininger a

Gender-differentiated impacts of tenure insecurity on agricultural performance in
Malawi's customary tenure systems

Introduction
In most African countries, land access continues to be governed by customary tenure systems. These have long been argued to provide high levels of tenure security and flexibility at a cost well below that of 'modern' arrangements (Bruce and Migot-Adholla 1994). Yet, studies also highlight that, with population pressure, these systems face increasing pressure: Unclear rules on how to deal with outsiders -whether migrants or foreign investors-can trigger disputes, undermining investment (Berry 2009;Fenske 2010) and productivity (Linkow 2016). Bias against women may further compromise tenure security and productive resource use (Fenske 2011;Goldstein and Udry 2006), with women more likely to be affected by disputes and to suffer productivity losses than men (Deininger and Castagnini 2006). Unclear institutional responsibilities may lead to proliferation and persistence of conflict (Eck 2014). To respond to this challenge, countries aim to either comprehensively formalize tenure or to carve out land deemed to be unutilized from customary arrangements sporadically. Yet, the limited sustainability of past efforts at systematic formalization is well documented (Atwood 1990;Pinckney and Kimuyu 1994) and although more recent efforts imply that lower-cost approaches may provide a viable option (Ali et al. 2014a), the verdict on their sustainability is still out (Ali et al. 2016a). Yet, the alternative of carving out land from the customary domain for 'commercial' development on a case by case basis raises equity and productivity issues (Sitko et al. 2014).
To contribute to this discussion, this paper assesses estates' impact on productivity and neighbors' tenure security decades after their establishment in Malawi, a country that underwent a burst of estate creation in the 1980s and is thus ideal for such an exploration. We use the 2006/07 National Census of Agriculture and Livestock (NACAL) that contains data on smallholders and estates for descriptive and analytical evidence.
Descriptively, we find that, although estates occupy more than 20% of Malawi's agricultural area, a large part of their land is left unutilized and, for most crops, their productivity remains well below that of smallholders. Data from digitizing estate leases suggest that legal uncertainty created by the expiration of most leases and failure to collect realistic lease fees lead to large loss of public revenue, beyond weakening incentives for more effective land use and land market operation: Even assuming that 40% of the area registered under agricultural estates is non-existent or unsuitable for agriculture, leasing the remainder at 3 the median rent of US$53/ha & year that, as per the last household survey, smallholders are willing to pay, 1 could generate annual income of some US$50 million, equivalent to almost 5% of Malawi's public revenue.
Beyond failing to live up to expectations in terms of productive development, estate development also does not seem to have reduced tenure insecurity: with 22% of farmers concerned about losing their land and 21% fearing encroachment, tenure insecurity is high. It is particularly pronounced among the poor, households not born in the village or engaged in land transactions or who had a land dispute in the past, and in villages close to an estate with no more land to be distributed. By comparison, impacts of matrilineal inheritance, a factor emphasized in the recent literature, seem modest at best. Including fear of land loss in a production function suggests that insecure tenure is associated with a 12% point output reduction for women but not for men. In principle, comparing the present value of productivity gains due to program-induced reductions in tenure insecurity to program costs would allow to decide if systematic regularization can economically justify an alternative to demand-driven estate development. This implies that if a tenure regularization program as implemented in Rwanda at a cost of US$5 to US$6 per parcel (Nkurunziza 2015) could eliminate insecurity in Malawi, its benefits would be more than sufficient to recoup the costs. Carefully designed and evaluated pilots that pay particular attention to women's rights and overlap with estate leases could help not only to deal with the issue of estate lease renewal, but also inform implementation of recently adopted Land Bills. If success can be demonstrated and regulations to implement at larger scale passed, they could provide significant economic benefits.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section two puts Malawi's land tenure system in context by describing its evolution, highlighting questions to be analyzed, and drawing out their relevance for recent debates on land legislation. Section three presents the sample and descriptive evidence on smallholders' and estates' intensity of land use and productivity and the size and potential lease fees from estates. Section four discusses econometric results on determinants and productivity impacts of perceived tenure insecurity by male and female users. Section five concludes by drawing out implications for policy and future research.

Context, issues, and link to the literature
While dating back to colonial times, Malawi's dualistic agrarian structure was reinforced by the creation of estates on more than 20% of the country's area in the late 1980s and limitations on smallholders' market participation. While the latter were eased in the 1990s, debates on land tenure remained inconclusive and opinions on next steps remained divided. Quantitative evidence can help put issues in perspective and point 1 Data are from the 2010/11 Third Integrated Household Survey (IHS3). We chose willingness to pay because it is slightly lower than the median rent paid (US $55/ha and year) and because it is based on responses from close to 90% of the sample rather than only those participating in markets. 4 out challenges to be confronted. This is particularly relevant to be aware of the challenges to be confronted in implementing the recently passed land Bills.

The evolution of Malawi's agrarian structure and land tenure system
Malawi has a dualistic farm structure that juxtaposes freehold or leasehold estates focused on 'commercial' activity with a customary sector emphasizing food crops. With 177 persons per km 2 in 2014, population density is high. During colonial times, cultivation of tobacco, the country's main cash and export crop, was restricted to white settlers who had preferential access to land, labor, and credit (Binswanger et al. 1995), and guaranteed market access via a quota system (Mataya and Tsonga 2001). After independence in 1964, estate land was transferred to Malawians (Jaffee 2003) with direct and indirect public support: 2 Until 1994, only estates were allowed to produce tobacco and smallholders had to sell output to the marketing board at low prices. The surplus thus generated was funneled to estate owners in the form of soft loans, thus providing an implicit subsidy that reinforced the dualistic structure of the country's agriculture (Kydd and Christiansen 1982). Thereafter, tobacco quotas were gradually extended to smallholders by licensing clubs of 10-30 members. Rapid take-up led to marked improvements in socio-economic indicators (Jaffee 2003) and soon brought small farmers' share in tobacco production to some 70% (Lea and Hanmer 2009).
Although debated since the mid-1990s, no corresponding changes were made in the country's land system.
To accommodate pent-up demand for land to cultivate commercial crops, 30,000 to 50,000 estates of 10-30 hectares each were carved out of what was deemed unutilized customary land and transferred to aspiring farmers in the late 1980s, largely via 21-year leaseholds (Devereux 1997), 3 before a 1994 moratorium to stop new estate establishment. 4 With records on paper only, data on the size and performance of the estate sector, including the amount of land leased to estates, total land rent owed to government, and levels of land utilization, remained scant, 5 making it difficult to design policy to fully utilize the sector's potential. 6

Efforts to improve tenure security
Malawi's customary sector, long characterized by egalitarian of land access and great diversity between different inheritance systems, has come under strain due to population growth, land scarcity (Ricker-Gilbert et al. 2014) and urban expansion that increased prices (Takane 2008). Land transactions with outsiders not 2 Transactions were directly supported through loans from the Farmers Marketing Board (FMB), a successor to the Native Tobacco Board, later transformed into the Agricultural Development and Marketing Cooperative (ADMARC). Indirect support came from restricting tobacco cultivation by smallholders and from establishing ADMARC as the sole marketing option with a power to fix prices (Mandondo and German 2015). 3 As access to a minimum of 12 ha of land was required to access tobacco marketing quotas, an unknown number of so-called 'ghost estates' was established, often in office-based processes without corresponding to actual land on the ground. 4 Failure to recognize customary rights -reinforced by subsidies that benefit the rich (Chinsinga and Poulton 2014)-was a key reason why even prima facie successful expansion of tobacco cultivation may have had mixed socio-economic impacts (Mandondo and German 2015). 5 A 1997 study that aimed to obtain more precise figures faced difficulties due to the parlous state of records. It estimates that leasehold estates cover less than 1 mn. ha while smallholders on customary land account for the remainder of the country's agricultural area (Gossage 1997). 6 A resettlement program to partly address this increased beneficiaries' food security but may have jeopardized women's rights (Mueller et al. 2014). Little is known about the extent to which this program addressed the issue of 'idle estates' or was the most cost-effective way for doing so. 5 only became more frequent but were also frequently challenged ex post ( van Donge 1999), with a possibility of disputes surfacing even after long periods of dormancy (Jul-Larsen and Mvula 2007). Land tenure reform has long been advocated to improve tenure security, encourage investment and effectiveness of land use (Fenske 2011;Lawry et al. 2016) as well as operation of land markets (Ali et al. 2014b), and female empowerment (Ali et al. 2016b;Newman et al. 2015).
To pursue such reform, a Presidential Commission was established in 1996 and submitted a report (Saidi 1999) that prompted adoption of a National Land Policy and implementation strategy in 2002. Draft legislation was submitted to Parliament in 2006 but no action was taken for a decade. 7 Substantive concerns have been raised regarding the Bills' failure to acknowledge complex local realities (Peters and Kambewa 2007), in particular (i) recognition of land rental and sales instead of either outlawing them or making them contingent on Ministerial approval; (ii) potentially adverse gender impacts of registering land in the name of (male) heads and requiring equal inheritance by all children that may conflict with deep-rooted norms (Peters 2010) or, in matrilineal systems, undermine females' bargaining power (Telalagic 2014); 8 and (iii) a danger of local land committees becoming politicized (Chinsinga 2011).
Whether tenure regularization efforts are warranted and the form they should take depends on incidence, levels, and productivity impacts of perceived tenure insecurity. Despite its relevance for policy, studies of this topic are limited. 9 In Burkina Faso conflict risk -emanating largely from migrants-was estimated to have reduced agricultural productivity by at least 8.9% (Linkow 2016). In Uganda, females have been shown to be more likely to be involved in land disputes, many inheritance-related, and this is estimated to reduce investment by close to 7% (Deininger and Castagnini 2006). In the case of Malawi, Place and Otsuka (2001), Lunduka (2009), andLovo (2016) postulate that discrepancy between males as prime decisionmaker and females' land ownership in matrilineal/matrilocal systems is a key source of tenure insecurity with negative impacts on investment and provide some evidence to support this notion with data.
Assessing the size of productivity impacts of perceived tenure insecurity and the extent to which they vary by gender allows us put this into context and to assess whether, beyond being statistically significant, investment disincentives due to the inheritance regime are economically meaningful, and to draw out policy 6 implications, noting that from an economic perspective, intervention programs are warranted only if the impacts of tenure insecurity are larger than the cost of implementing a program to reduce tenure insecurity. 10

Data and descriptive evidence
Descriptive data highlight three results. First, tenure insecurity is high with 22% of cultivators concerned about land loss and 15% having experienced land disputes in the last decade. Second, village data highlight increased land scarcity and transactions. Finally, comparing the productivity of estates with that of smallholders points towards marked differences in terms of intensity and efficiency of land use, including a pronounced negative relationship between farm size and productivity over the entire farm-size spectrum.

Sampling and characterization of smallholder farmers
Our data are from the 2006/07 NACAL implemented by Malawi's National Statistical Office (NSO) with the Ministry of Agriculture. Beyond household-, individual-, and village-level data collection instruments administered to a sample of smallholders, the survey also includes estates. While estates were drawn from a nation-wide list, 11 smallholder farms to be sampled were selected in two stages: In a first stage, enumeration areas (EAs) were randomly selected by district with stratification by agro-ecological zone and a listing conducted in those that had been selected. In the second stage, farm households in each of the selected EAs were randomly drawn with a target of 10 small (< 2 acres) and 5 medium sized (≥ 2 acres) farms each. 12 For a sample of 931 estates and 23,896 smallholder farmers, the survey collected information on household composition, welfare, food security, assets (incl. livestock), marketing, and parcel-level data on land tenure and investment, in the 12-month period starting October 2006. Data gaps reduced the sample for our analysis to 17,672 smallholders and 868 estates with complete information. Also, to reduce error from misreporting due to intra-household informational asymmetries that are widespread in developing countries (Goldstein and Udry 2008;Udry 1996) including Malawi (Lovo 2016;Telalagic 2012), we restrict the regression sample for estimating impacts of insecure tenure to parcels operated by the respondent, which reduced the sample to 15,472 smallholders. 13 The data point towards widespread tenure insecurity: 22% and 21% of respondents voice concern that their land may be taken away or encroached upon. In the past decade, 15% of respondent households experienced a land dispute (table 1). While there is no information disputes nature or start date to link to the case study 10 Implementation costs can be reduced through participatory approaches based on general boundaries as in Rwanda with costs of US$5 per parcel (Ali et al. 2016a;Ali et al. 2014a) or even more via group approaches as in Mozambique (Kaarhus and Dondeyne 2015). 11 Availability of a complete list of estates is a key advantage of this study over earlier ones where inability to compile the needed information made sampling very difficult (Abeyasekera 1997). 12 In EAs with less than 5 small farms, small farms were added to bring the total sample to 15. 13 Coefficients of interest for the entire sample have the same sign but are less precisely estimated, consistent with the notion that information on parcels that are not operated by the respondent contains considerable measurement error. 7 literature (Peters 2007; van Donge 1999), elders and traditional leaders play an important role and resolve some 60% of disputes. For most households, insecure tenure adds to an already precarious situation: 30% and 17% of respondents experienced theft of crops and livestock, respectively, in the last 5 years. Housing is basic with 75% having a grass roof and 79% a mud floor. With only about 40% having more than 5 years of schooling, education may limit participation in more demanding off-farm activities even if demand exists (Dimova et al. 2015;Nagler and Naude 2014). High food price variability (Harttgen et al. 2016), marked seasonality (Sassi 2015) and exposure to rainfall risks (Lewin et al. 2012), and health shocks (Hyder et al. 2015) in a situation of limited asset ownership and insurance access are reasons why 28% of respondent households had not eaten normally the last seven days and 19% had at least one member seriously sick.
Land lease markets are incipient ), with 6% of households participating.
The mean smallholder parcel had been in use for some 12 years and measures 0.61 ha (table 2). While most smallholder land is customary (77%), 20% is under other tenures including freehold. Inheritance remains the main avenue of accessing land in Malawi (Peters 2010;Takane 2008); two-thirds of parcels were acquired in this way, followed by allocation via the village headman (19%), rental (4%), and purchase (2%).
Most of smallholders' land area is used for maize (46%) followed by wheat (24%), sorghum/millet (10%) and various crops including legumes, tubers, and cash crops including coffee or tobacco that together account for some 20% of area. With an output value of 305 US$/ha at the 2006 exchange rate, organic manure is used on 36% of plots, improved seed on 11%, and chemical fertilizer on 7%. Data on labor use allows inferences only on which household members participated in specific tasks, suggesting that land preparation and management tasks such as ridging and weeding are, with very few exceptions, performed manually with females being more involved than men.
Village level variables highlight Malawi's diversity in terms of inheritance practices (Berge et al. 2014) and the extent to which land scarcity has increased market activity or given rise to intensification (table 3).
67% of villages follow matrilineal inheritance patterns (61%, 33%, and 6% of which matri-, patri-, or neolocal), 28% a patrilineal one (93% and 7% of which patri-and neo-local), and 5% others. With 84% and 79%, respectively, matrilineal inheritance prevails in the South -where matrilocality dominates-and the Center -where villages are almost equally split between matri-and patri-locality. It is virtually absent in the North where only 2% of villages report to follow a matrilineal and patrilocal inheritance pattern. 8 Limits on land availability are evident from the fact that only 11% or 31% of villages still have uncultivated or unallocated land available and that in 11% of villages, households have moved out to escape land shortage. Village land is no longer exclusively used by villagers either, as 37% have village land owned by outsiders and 34% rent village land to them (21% where outsiders own and rent village land). Higher outside demand for land is also visible from the fact that 11% and 15% of villages had, in the last 5 years, sold or given land to outsiders, sometimes (14%) failing to respect the village head's authority. Land conflict is becoming more frequent: 29% and 20% of villages reported conflict among village families or with neighboring villages, respectively. Some 24% of villages are located within walking distance from estates and in more than a fifth of these cases, land conflicts with neighboring estates are reported. Infrastructure access remains limited with only 35% of villages connected to an all-season road.

Comparison of land use and productivity between smallholders and estates
Our survey comprises small and large farms. We can thus compare the intensity and productivity of land use between smallholders and estates to assess the long-term impact of land transfers to estates as well as the extent to which rental or sales markets can attenuate dualistic structures and equalize returns between different types of producers. Doing so allows us to see if, as some have claimed, studies of the relationship between farm-size and productivity that rely on household samples may miss a significant part of the distribution and thus come to erroneous conclusions (Jayne et al. 2015).
Comparing smallholder with estate data provides interesting insights in a number of respects. Mean age for the 868 estates with data is 19 years with largest estates the oldest (table 4). Most (68%) are owned by natural persons of Malawian nationality, 16% by 'others' -most likely legal persons-and 10% by expatriates.
Expatriates' ownership share peaks at the 100-500 ha size while that of government and 'others' peaks in the greater than 500 category. In contrast to smallholders, almost all estates (87%) use fertilizer and close to two-thirds (61%) purchase pesticide or seeds, a practice more prevalent for larger sizes in both cases.
With about a third of estates having tenants; the share of estates with tenants peaks at close to 50% in the 10-100 size category. Compared to large farms in other countries that produce bulk commodities and often generate little employment (Ali et al. 2015), many of Malawi's estates are quite labor intensive. Permanent or temporary male (female) labor is hired by 60% (25%) and 66% (52%) of estates respectively. For these, demand for permanent labor per ha cultivated is almost equal to the amount of labor spent by smallholders based on the 2010/11 LSMS-ISA survey . It increases with size to about 0.9 males and 0.6 females in the largest category though the pattern for temporary labor is more volatile.
Claims about un-or underused estate land recurred in Malawi's policy debate (Holden et al. 2006). While our sample was not designed to provide conclusive evidence on this, data suggest that for surveyed estates, 9 15% of allocated land is operated, a share that decreases from 88% in the group below 5 ha to 11% in the above 500 ha group (table 5). While smallholders below 1 ha cultivate more than 95% of their land, mean land use intensity for the few (154) smallholder farmers with more than 10 ha is only 22%. Comparing production structure between smallholders and estates reveals differences in cropping patterns: for sampled estates, 42% of area is devoted to tobacco, followed by maize (39%), groundnuts (7%), and other crops (table 5). While differences in terms of crop composition somewhat limit the scope for comparing yields, mean values suggest that for all crops with the exception of sunflower and tea, yields by smallholders are significantly above those by estates. As estates use consistently more inputs than smallholders, this suggests a strong negative relationship between farm size and productivity on the land area actually cultivated. Non-parametric regressions of maize, rice, tobacco and coffee yields for the pooled sample plotted against the log of farm size in figures 1a-1d graphically illustrate that, although slope varies by crop, the overall relationship is stable and rather tightly estimated.

Econometric results
Regression results support the notion that perceived risk of land loss was higher for the poor, strangers, people who transacted land, and those who had experienced land loss/encroachment or were involved in land disputes earlier. Fear of land loss is estimated to reduce productivity by 5% overall, an effect limited to females who, as a result of fearing land loss, are estimated to incur losses of 12%. While this would be large enough to fund a systematic low-cost program of land regularization to eliminate insecurity, the net effect of matrilineal inheritance on productivity remains limited.

Determinants of perceived tenure insecurity
We identify household-level determinants of perceived tenure insecurity 16 by estimating where TI ijk is an indicator variable for household i in village j and district k expressing fear that his/her land may either be taken away or be encroached upon. DX ijk is a vector household level variables that may affect perceived tenure insecurity with variables from three main groups, namely (i)  are reported overall (cols. 1&3) and for specifications where impacts of past land loss or encroachment are allowed to differ by gender. Past loss is estimated to increase the fear of land being taken by 10% irrespective of gender while past encroachment affected fear of future encroachment more than past loss with point estimates of 34% and less than 7%, respectively, and the latter insignificant for male respondents.
In addition, having had disputes in the past is the most important factor (15% to 23%), supporting case study evidence of traditional institutions often failing to conclusively resolve disputes. The poor are more 16 As noted earlier, information on subjective tenure insecurity is not available at parcel level. 17 Categories include whether land was acquired from the village headman, inherited/kept when spouse passed away, borrowed or inherited from parents, obtained from government, or bought, rented or borrowed from others. 18 As we are interested to see whether the magnitude of threats from estates varies by availability of land, an interaction term between the indicator variable for having unallocated land and the indicator variable for having estates within walking distance is also included in DV jk . 19 All variables in equation (1) are included in the regressions but only variables that significantly affected the fears are displayed in table 6. 11 tenure insecure; not having eaten normally in the last 7 days and having experienced crop theft estimated to increase the perceived danger of land loss by 5% and 3%, respectively. In line with the findings from studies suggesting that traditional systems make it difficult for 'strangers' to acquire land, having borrowed land is estimated to have increased the risk of expropriation by 7% without effect on encroachment risk, while renting out land increases perceived risk in both areas by 3%, about the same as having all land located outside the village (which affected the fear of encroachment more than fear of expropriation).
Having been born in the village and identity of owner and operator reduced perceived likelihood of land being taken (encroached) by 5% (2%) and 5% (4%), respectively with each year of land occupation reducing the fear of expropriation by 1% but not affecting perceived encroachment risk.
Village-level factors are estimated to have affected fear of land loss but less of encroachment. Villagers are estimated to be 5% likely to fear land loss if other households had moved out due to land conflict. Presence of estates in walking distance or unallocated land in the village are estimated to each have increased the fear of land loss by 3%, presumably by increasing competition over land or by prompting certain groups to try and acquire land ahead of others. The interaction between these two variables is positive with a point estimate of 6%, suggesting that in presence of unallocated land, positive effects (e.g. employment) from estates outweighed negative ones.
To compare our results to impacts attributed to inheritance regimes in the literature, we include dummies on prevailing inheritance regimes and their interactions with operator's gender. We find that in matrilineal regimes, male operators' perceived risk of land loss is increased by 7.1%. By comparison, the fear of land being encroached is lower by 4-5 points in patrilineal systems for women and weakly significant for males, suggesting that the inheritance regime is one of several factors, and apparently not the most important, that affect tenure insecurity.
Using the fear of (future) land loss as a right hand side variable in the equations for investment undertaken in in the past (any time after land acquisition) would suffer from reverse causality. Assuming that the inheritance regime did not change in the period of interest, we can still test for its impacts on investment by estimating specifications similar to (1) with the dependent variable being whether a household had planted fruit trees, built terraces, or practiced crop rotation. Results from doing so in table 7, which suppresses estimated coefficients for all remaining variables, fail to provide strong to support the notion of matrilineal inheritance regimes as a major cause of low investment: To the contrary, overall likelihood of planting fruit trees is significantly higher in matrilineal systems, though estimated coefficients are insignificantly different from zero for males. Terracing is significantly less likely in patrilineal systems for males and females. Finally, for crop rotation, arguably a very short-term measure, investment is indeed 12 lower in matrilineal and 'other' compared to patrilineal systems (table 7, col. 5) but gender disaggregation suggests that in both matri-and patrilineal regimes, it is males who invest less.

Impacts of tenure insecurity on productivity
To quantify the impacts of tenure insecurity on production, we let Q lpijk be the value of output by household i in village j and district k on plot l of parcel p. A lpijk , L lpijk , and K lpijk denote crop area; a vector of labor variables including no. of household members by gender and age participating in land preparation, planting, weeding and harvesting, the no. of hired workers, and an indicator of whether the household participated in exchange labor; and a vector of values of organic manure, chemical fertilizer, seeds used in production as well as agricultural assets. 20 Taking logarithms on both sides yields = 0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + + 1 + 2 + 3 + where q lpijk , a lpijk , l lpijk , and k lpijk are logarithms of Q lpijk , A lpijk , L lpijk , and K lpijk , and θs are technical coefficients to be estimated. We include indicator variables for zero values of inputs following (Battese 1997). While TI ijk , DV jk , V jk and λ k are defined as in (1), parcel-and household-level determinates of tenure insecurity and controls are separated in equation (2) with parcel-aggregated characteristics excluded from DX ijk and X ijk and included in parcel-level vectors of DPA pijk and PA pijk . We also control for household-level extension activities and plot-level indicators for whether the plot was ridged and weeded, and the share of crop area devoted to each of the main crops, which may affect production but not fear. δ 1 is the parameter of interest that quantifies the impacts of tenure insecurity. To explore if insecurity (fear of land loss or encroachment) affects production either directly or indirectly, we estimate three specifications based on (2), namely (i) one where tenure insecurity determinates (DPA pijk and DX ijk and DV jk ) and investment (I pijk ) are excluded; (ii) one where the effect of tenure insecurity is allowed to vary by gender; and (iii) one where investments are also included with tenure insecurity determinants controlled for. 21 Results are illustrated in table 8. 22 The fear of land being taken away is estimated to have reduced output by 5% overall but we note that this result is driven by female operators whose output declined by 12% as a result of tenure insecurity while results from the relevant test in the table's bottom row suggest that tenure insecurity in terms of the fear of land loss (as well as land being encroached) has no perceptible impact on productivity for males. Signs and significance on inputs are as expected with land contributing most (40%), followed by chemical fertilizer (11%), seed (10%), agricultural assets and organic manure (6%). Although 20 Hired labor, exchange labor, and agricultural assets are household-level variables. 21 For space reasons, we only report the coefficient on the crop rotation indicator noting that coefficients on other investments are insignificant. 22 All variables in equation (2) are included in the regressions but only fear-related variables, variables for investments, and variables for inputs of the production function are displayed in table 8.

13
the survey's measure of family labor, i.e. if males, females, or children household members participated in certain types of activities is extremely imprecise, it made a positive contribution to output. 23 Each added sick member over the last three months is estimated to have reduced output by 4 points. Participation in exchange work, presumably to break seasonal bottlenecks, is estimated to have increased production by 8 points and the coefficient on extension is positive but insignificant.
One advantage of (2) is that it allows us to combine direct and indirect impacts to assess if and to what extent inheritance regimes affects productivity. 24 To obtain such estimates, we add (in col. 3 and 6), an indicator variable for whether or not a household practiced crop rotation, the one investment that, based on our earlier results is significantly affected by inheritance regimes (see table 7). Results provide no basis for the conjecture of matrilineal systems being associated with lower levels of productivity, irrespective of the inclusion of a crop rotation dummy. For patrilineal regimes, a significant negative effect emerges for specifications that do not control for crop rotation but disappears if gender or the respective indicator are included, suggesting that even in patrilineal systems, failure to practice crop rotation rather than the inheritance regime per se, is associated with lower levels of productivity.

Conclusion and policy implications
Data from Malawi allow us to assess the extent to which large farms (estates) established sporadically and in isolation from the customary sector in the late 1980s helped to establish a dynamic commercial farm sector. We find that in most cases, estates' productive performance is inferior to that of smallholders while in the smallholder sector, fear of land loss is high and associated with significant productivity losses for female cultivators, and, contrary to earlier literature, the inheritance regime is not a major impediment to smallholder investment or productivity. The estimated present value of fear-induced productivity losses is estimated to exceed the amount of resources required to implement a low-cost systematic tenure regularization program along the lines of Rwanda.
Two implications for policy stand out. First, even in the customary regime, piloting of approaches to secure tenure especially for women, accompanied by careful real-time evaluation, could thus help inform next steps to feed into regulation for Land Bill implementation. Second, where land had been transferred to estates historically, this would need to be preceded by use of digitized administrative data -including on boundaries or (expired) lease documents-to adjudicate rights in a way that, where needed, would reconcile legal rights with current occupancy status. Major steps for doing so would include (i) revision of lease fees to bring them more in line with productive potential; and (ii) establishment of a systematic process to 23 Estimated coefficients on male members' input are slightly above that for women and children or hired workers 24 Such analysis will be valid if inheritance regimes are exogenously given and do not change over time.
14 ascertain and formally register location and occupancy of land leased to estates, extinguish rights to 'ghost' estates, adjudicate overlapping claims, and as much as possible allow market-based reassignment of unused land to more productive uses. Impacts on own-source revenue generation could be very large: Our estimates suggest that, beyond supporting greater efficiency of land use and opening up avenues to access land via lease markets, incremental public revenue to be generated through realistic lease fees could potentially be very large, amounting to up to US$50 mn. per year, equivalent to 5% of public revenue.
Follow-up research will be of interest in two areas. The first relates to determinants of estates' productive performance and their impact on neighboring smallholders in ways going beyond averages and exploring heterogeneity across estates. This could combine survey data on location and actual occupancy of estate land with more specific methods of imagery recognition to assess not only current land use but to rely on historical imagery to also provide evidence on changes over time. Beyond providing a basis for any effort at systematic lease updating, this could help assess estates' effect on neighboring smallholders in a way that would complement existing methodologies such as Ali et al. (2016c) with evidence on channels via which such effects may be transmitted. A second area for follow-up research relates to exploring ways in which smallholders' tenure insecurity could be reduced in different settings and to assessing productivity impacts of such interventions. This could improve not only understanding of production relations in Malawi, but also help ensure that efforts at systematic tenure regularization address these so as to have the desired impact on smallholder productivity and welfare.
Source: Own computation from 2006/07 NACAL. Last column contains t-tests for difference in manse between males and females (*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1).   ). Household members working on a plot are defined as engaged in all 4 activities. t-tests for differences in means between males and females (*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1).    Basic controls at plot, household, and village level as well as district fixed effects are included throughout but not reported. Basic plot controls include land area and land topography. Basic household controls include the number of children, the number of adults, the number of old people, head's characteristics (gender, age, education, birth place, and main job), ownership of durable goods, housing conditions, the value of livestock and poultry, and the value of agricultural assets. Basic village controls include access to the all seasonal road. Robust standard errors in parentheses clustered by village. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. 1.43 7.12*** 3.02* Unknown+ Unknown *Male=0 0.03 0.00 5.21** Note: Basic controls at plot, household, and village level, district fixed effects, and all variables reported in table 6 are included throughout but not reported. Basic plot controls include land area and land topography. Basic household controls include the number of children, the number of adults, the number of old people, head's characteristics (gender, age, education, birth place, and main job), ownership of durable goods, housing conditions, the value of livestock and poultry, the value of agricultural assets, and the number of extension activities attended. Basic village controls include access to the all seasonal road. Robust standard errors in parentheses clustered by village. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.   9.73*** 9.43*** Unknown+ Unknown *Male=0 0.03 0.04 Note: Dependent variable is logarithm of output value. Basic controls at plot, household, and village level as well as district fixed effects are included throughout but not reported. Basic controls include topography and terracing at plot, number of children, adults, and old people in the household, head's characteristics (gender, age, education, birth place, main job), asset & livestock ownership, housing conditions at household; and indicator variables for access to all season road at village level. Determinant of tenure insecurity include the variables reported in table 6. Robust standard errors in parentheses clustered by village. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1