The program appeared to have a remarkable effect, though not the one anticipated. A number of studies of the Peruvian experiment found that property titles had no significant effect on access among the poor to business credit (Cockburn 2000; Field and Torero 2002; and other studies cited there). Mortgage lending did eventually increase, but only after a new government abandoned de Soto's neoliberal prescriptions and began to subsidize low-income mortgages. However, another study found an unexpected change in the economic lives of those who became formal property owners: they began to work harder.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1925