Reverse-Share-Tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency: Bargaining Power of Landowners and the Sharecropper’s Productivity

Hosaena H. Ghebru and Stein Holden ()

No 126883, 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Making use of a unique tenant-landlord matched data from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, we are able to show how strategic response of tenants - to varying economic and tenure security status of the landlords - is important in explaining productivity differentials of sharecroppers. The results show that sharecroppers’ yield are significantly lower on plots leased from landlords who are non-kin; female; with lower income generating opportunity; and tenure insecure households, than on plots leased from landlords with contrasting characteristics. While, on aggregate, the result shows no significant efficiency loss on kin-operated sharecropped plots, a more decomposed analyses indicate strong evidences of Marshallian inefficiency on kin-operated plots leased from landlords with weaker bargaining power and higher tenure insecurity. This study, thus, shows how failure to control for such heterogeneity of landowners' characteristics can explain the lack of clarity in the existing empirical literature on the extent of moral hazard problems in sharecropping contracts.

Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; International Development; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Reverse Share-Tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency: Bargaining Power of Landowners and the Sharecroppers’ Productivity (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae12:126883

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.126883

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