The Importance of Incentives - Zimbabwe Edition

The Center for Global Development reports:

Land reform begun in Zimbabwe in 2000 was supposed to redistribute land from predominantly white-owned commercial farms to much poorer black farmers who toiled on communal lands. Proponents argued that the redistribution was necessary because commercial farms occupied the most fertile lands, leaving only dry, dusty land for communal use. This rationale reflects confusion about cause and effect regarding land ownership and land quality. In the "Before" photo below, the dry communal lands on the left are sharply delineated from the green private farms dotted with lakes and ponds on the right--so sharply that soil quality and rainfall are unlikely to explain the difference. Now click the arrow to see what happened after land reform. The dams and irrigation systems on the private farms collapsed, making them look more like communal lands, to the detriment of all.

To get the full effect, you must click through and examine the photos. My students will recognize this as sort of photographic difference-in-difference estimator from a "natural" experiment. That is, we can visually see how the different regions change at different rates.

Hat tip to Art Carden at Division of Labor.