An Experiment on Property Rights and Coordination

Last registered on November 17, 2020

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
An Experiment on Property Rights and Coordination
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005319
Initial registration date
January 18, 2020

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 21, 2020, 2:03 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
November 17, 2020, 6:31 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Columbia University

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2020-01-21
End date
2020-03-15
Secondary IDs
Abstract
A key feature of legal systems is to help people to coordinate toward specific behaviors, the so called ``expressive function of the law" (Sunstein, 1996). In this project, we verify whether private property affects coordination in a situation characterized by multiple equilibria. We study a reform of property rights that formalized and registered use rights over land. With the reform, registered land plots can be defended in court against contenders, sold, or used as collateral by land owners. Therefore, the reform introduces a shift from collective and informal land rights to a system akin to private ownership.We test subjects' ability to coordinate using a two-player coordination game characterized by multiple Nash equilibria in pure strategy similar to Jackson and Xing (2014): two asymmetric equilibria characterized by highly inequitable payoffs and one symmetric equilibrium that results in a lower total payoff. We make use of the peculiar implementation of the land rights reform to compare the choices of subjects who experienced land ownership against those who maintained a system of collective and informal land rights.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Dari-Mattiacci, Giuseppe and Marco Fabbri. 2020. "An Experiment on Property Rights and Coordination." AEA RCT Registry. November 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5319-1.2000000000000002
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
See attached pre-analysis plan
Intervention Start Date
2020-01-21
Intervention End Date
2020-03-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1) Frequency of coordination in a modified Battle of the Sexes game
2) Payoffs and Gini coefficient
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See attache pre-analysis plan

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
See attached pre-analysis plan
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
See attached pre-analysis plan

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We run a modified battle-of-the-sexes game with an additional symmetric option and we combine it with the peculiar implementation of a property right reform
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization in office
Randomization Unit
Village
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
32
Sample size: planned number of observations
576
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
288
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
See attached pre-analysis plan
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Commitee - Parc de Salut MAR
IRB Approval Date
2018-04-11
IRB Approval Number
2018/8015/I
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

An Experiment on Property Rights and Coordination

MD5: 262008a7b87063ef6392342daa5bc6b6

SHA1: 8e84b7117cfd7d2bd068ab1b3d003f3f8ae2db0b

Uploaded At: January 18, 2020

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
March 15, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
March 15, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
32
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
576
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
288
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials