Land Tenure Insecurity as an Investment Incentive: The Case of Migrant Cocoa Farmers and Settlers in Ivory Coast
Catherine Bros,
Alain Desdoigts () and
Hugues Kouadio
Journal of African Economies, 2019, vol. 28, issue 2, 147-175
Abstract:
This study sets forth a positive relationship between tenure insecurity and investment over different time horizons among cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast. This positive relationship stands in stark contrast to results found in many related studies. We argue that this difference stems from the types of crops considered and depends, in particular, on whether one considers annual and/or perennial crops. Given that cultivating perennial crops such as cocoa requires large upfront investments over a long period of time, retaining control over land in the long run is essential, especially when the trees reach full maturity. According to some theoretical arguments, investing is a way of retaining such control when the farmer does not have administrative rights. Our results show that cocoa farmers whose status remains precarious in terms of tenure security (migrants) have a higher propensity to invest, especially when the tree is about to yield substantially. This study thus underlines the need to account for the life cycle of crops and the associated revenue streams when assessing the relationship between tenure (in-)security and investment.
Keywords: tenure security; investment time horizons; crop life cycle; outsiders; Ivory Coast (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejy019 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
Working Paper: Land Tenure Insecurity as an Investment Incentive: The Case of Migrant Cocoa Farmers and Settlers in Ivory Coast (2019)
Working Paper: Land Tenure Insecurity as an Investment Incentive: The Case of Migrant Cocoa Farmers and Settlers in Ivory Coast (2017) 
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:oup:jafrec:v:28:y:2019:i:2:p:147-175.
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal
More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().