Wash Engineer and Civil Engineer

SPRING CLEANING: RURAL WATER IMPACTS,
VALUATION, AND PROPERTY RIGHTS INSTITUTIONS∗
MICHAEL KREMER
JESSICA LEINO
EDWARD MIGUEL
ALIX PETERSON ZWANE

I. INTRODUCTION
Movement toward private property rights institutions has been called critical to successful economic development (De Soto
1989; North 1990). Yet social norms and formal laws often create communal property rights in natural resources. In Islamiclaw, for
∗ This research is supported by the Hewlett Foundation, USDA/Foreign Agricultural Service, International Child Support, Swedish International Development Agency, Finnish Fund for Local Cooperation in Kenya, google.org, the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Sustainability Science Initiative at the Harvard Center for International Development. We thank Alicia Bannon,
Jeff Berens, Lorenzo Casaburi, Carmem Domingues, Willa Friedman, Francois
Gerard, Anne Healy, Jonas Hjort, Jie Ma, Clair Null, Owen Ozier, Camille Pannu,
Changcheng Song, Eric Van Dusen, Melanie Wasserman, and Heidi Williams for excellent research assistance, and we thank the field staff, especially Polycarp Waswa and Leonard Bukeke. Jack Colford, Alain de Janvry, Giacomo
DiGiorgi, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, Liran Einav, Andrew Foster, Michael
Greenstone, Avner Greif, Michael Hanemann, Danson Irungu, Ethan Ligon, Steve
Luby, Chuck Manski, Enrico Moretti, Kara Nelson, Aviv Nevo, Sheila Olmstead,
Ariel Pakes, Judy Peterson, Pascaline Dupas, Rob Quick, Mark Rosenzweig,
Elisabeth Sadoulet, Sandra Spence, Duncan Thomas, Ken Train, Chris Udry, Dale
Whittington, and many seminar participants have provided helpful comments.
Opinions presented here are those of the authors and not those of the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation or the World Bank. All errors are our own.

c The Author(s) 2011. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of President and
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