Take what you can: property rights, contestability and conflict

Weak property rights are strongly associated with underdevelopment, low state capacity and civil conflict. In economic models of conflict, outbreaks of violence require a prize that is both valuable and contestable. This paper exploits spatial and temporal variation in the availability of land with title that is contestable by private actors, to explore the relationship between (in)secure property rights and civil conflict in the Brazilian Amazon. The results suggest that resolving this contestability of title at the local level could eliminate substantively all local land-related violence but might increase conflict in areas where title remained contestable.