The urban population of Africa is growing rapidly leading to a rising demand for urban services that many local governments struggle to provide. Information on willingness-to-pay is key for government pricing policy and the allocation of goods and services but not easily collected. This paper studies the provision and uptake of title deeds in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, asking whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners’ willingness-to-pay. We randomly assign leaders to make predictions under different settings and then elicit owners’ actual willingness-to-pay. We find that demand for titles is substantial, but below exorbitant fees. Leaders’ predictions can approximate the aggregate demand curve and distinguish variation across owners. Accuracy deteriorates in a setting where predictions are used to allocate subsidies but adding cash incentives mitigates this. We conclude that local leaders can provide valuable information to the state if they are compensated and more closely integrated with the formal land system.

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“Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long Run Evidence from Tanzania”, with G. Michaels, D. Nigmatulina, F. Rauch, N. Baruah, and A. Dahlstrand, Journal of Political Economy, July 2021.

 “Building the city: from slums to a modern metropolis”, with J.V. Henderson and A. Venables, Review of Economic Studies, May 2021.

“Life in a Slum: understanding living conditions in Nairobi’s slums across time and space”, with J. Bird and P. Montebruno, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, July 2017.

“Building functional cities”, with J.V. Henderson, A. Venables, and I. Samsonov, Science, May 2016.

Placement Officer
Professor Mark Schankerman

Supervisor
Professor Vernon Henderson

Advisor
Professor Henry Overman

References
Dr Guy Michaels
Professor Elias Papaioannou  

Email
t.regan@lse.ac.uk

Room number
32L.2.28

Office Address
Department of Economics,
London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE