Several studies link modern economic performance to institutions transplanted by European colonizers and here I extend this line of research to Asia and Africa. In case of Asia, Japan imposed its system of well-defined property rights in land on some of its Asian colonies, including Korea, Taiwan, and Palau. In 1939 Japan began to survey and register private land in its island colonies, an effort that was completed in Palau but interrupted elsewhere by World War II. Within Micronesia robust economic development followed only in Palau where individual property rights were well defined. Second, I show that well-defined property rights in Korea and Taiwan secured land taxation and enabled farmers to obtain bank loans for capital improvements, principally irrigation systems. Considering all of Japan’s colonies, I use the presence or absence of a land survey as an instrument to identify the causal impact of new institutions. My estimates show that property-defining institutions were important for economic development, results that are confirmed when using a similar approach with British Colonies in Asia. Third, my analytical model predicts that high costs of creating an ownership updating system and a citizen identity system discourage a short-sighted government from implementing these crucial components, the absence of which gradually makes land registration obsolete.
Finally, I analyze the importance of legal safeguards against land expropriation in Africa. It is generally established that Britain was more effective in transferring their legal systems in Africa during the decolonization process than was France. While most African countries repealed British-inspired legal safeguards after independence, Botswana and Mauritius (2009 GDP per capita (PPP) $12,100 and $12,400, respectively) kept all such safeguards. By using differences in decolonization and post-colonial reforms as instrumental variables, this dissertation provides empirical evidence suggesting that securing private land ownership was an important factor of economic growth in Botswana and Mauritius.