Reworking land reform: A credibility approach to property rights in China's forest sector

Why do land reforms rarely achieve their desired effects? This dissertation posits that a key to solve this question lies in a closer understanding of the specific workings of property rights. The idea is developed empirically in China’s forest sector, where one of the world’s largest land-reform undertakings in modern times was initiated under the Collective Forest Tenure Reform. The study offers a credibility approach to focus on the relations between property rights and their embedded political, legal, and social structures. Three phases of reform are selected for further empirical investigation: The establishment, enforcement, and exercising of property rights. The dissertation empirically demonstrates how each phase is critical for the functioning and credibility of reform objectives, and ultimately in influencing socioeconomic development in the Chinese forest sector and beyond.