Tenure Security and Long‐term Investment on Tenanted Land: Evidence from Colonial Taiwan

Elliott Fan () and Shu‐jen Yeh

Pacific Economic Review, 2019, vol. 24, issue 4, 570-587

Abstract: We use farm diary data from Taiwan in the 1920s and 1930s to estimate the impacts of a state‐wide tenancy reform on tenants’ investment in the farmland and production outcome. The reform, commencing in 1922, enhanced the tenure security for the tenants by promoting written contracts that extended tenure length from 1 year to 5–6 years, and by establishing government‐sponsored organizations for dispute settlements. Our estimations rely on a difference‐in‐difference framework, where self‐cultivated farms are used as the control group. We find that the reform encouraged tenants to make investments in the irrigation and drainage system of the farms, which is expected to have long‐lasting benefits for production. The improved irrigation/drainage system led to significant efficiency gains for the farms. In contrast, the reform did not affect tenants’ usage of fertilizer much, which benefits production for only a crop season or a year.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0106.12211

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:bla:pacecr:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:570-587

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1361-374X

Access Statistics for this article

Pacific Economic Review is currently edited by Kenneth S. Chan and Yin-wong Cheung

More articles in Pacific Economic Review from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().