The Price of a Land Dispute: A Law and Economics Analysis of Land Litigation Delay in Ghana

Nearly every Ghanaian family has a land story. The plot sold twice, the boundary that moved, the stool dispute older than its litigants, the case a grandfather filed that a grandchild now attends. The stories are told as personal misfortune, and the courts discuss them as an administrative burden. Both framings are true and both are incomplete, because a land dispute is also an economic event, for as long as the case runs, the parcel at its centre is frozen, and frozen land earns nothing, secures nothing and builds nothing. This article asks the question the stories never quite reach. What does land litigation delay cost, and who pays?