Evaluating Efficiency Gains from Tenancy Reform Targeting a Heterogeneous Group of Sharecroppers: Evidence from India

Takashi Kurosaki, 卓 黒崎, Rasyad Parinduri and Saumik Paul

No 2016-10, CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: This paper reevaluates the effect of a tenancy reform, popularly known as Operation Barga, on agricultural productivity in West Bengal, India. We employ a transparent empirical strategy based on synthetic control. We focus on the varying intensity of Operation Barga across West Bengal districts by comparing the districts' agricultural productivity with that of counterfactual districts using the synthetic control approach. Concerns over agro-climatic diversity and the recorded history of land reforms were also addressed while creating counterfactual districts. We find robust empirical evidence of a negligible effect on agricultural productivity growth. Next, we consider a theoretical framework to estimate the potential gains from Operation Barga in light of several types of sharecroppers. Consistent with the empirical findings, we conclude that the capacity of Operation Barga to enhance agricultural productivity is heavily constrained by the heterogeneity of sharecroppers in terms of wealth and livelihood structure.

Keywords: land reform; agricultural productivity; synthetic control; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 O4 Q1 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/28240/wp2016-10.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hitcei:2016-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Reiko Suzuki ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).