Alternative theories of sharecropping: Some tests using evidence from northeast India

ACHIEVING SOCIAL OBJECTIVES THROUGH PRIVATE TRANSFERS: A Review

“…The best way of controlling for other factors affecting farming technique and performance, such as access to credit, willingness to bear risk, and farming and husbandry skills, is to compare input intensities and yields on owned and leased plots farmed by the same individual. Among such studies, Bell (1977) for Bihar, Hossain (1977) for Bangladesh, and Shaban (1987) for the Deccan plateau found significant differences, whereas Chakravarty and Rudra (1973) found none in the case of West Bengal. Another survey of rnore recent studies of Asian economies (Otsuka and Hayami 1988) also reveals rather mixed findings.…”

“…Furthermore, given the absence of insurance markets, fixed rent tenancies will not always permit the exploitation of all opportunities for spreading the risks arising from production. If, for example, wages are risky (Newbery 1977), or the markets for farming skills or the services of draft animals are absent (Bell 1989), sharecropping will emerge alongside fixed rent tenancy. Thus contractual diversity is a response to risk aversion when arrangements for the direct provision of insurance are not available.…”

The Choice of Institutions: The Role of Risk and Risk-Aversion

“…Many institutions may have also (or even exclusively) evolved to mitigate risk (see for example, Bell, 1977, andTownsend, 1994). Theory would suggest that risk adverse individuals will favor institutions that facilitate high returns (i.e.…”

Incomplete Contracts And Investment : A Study Of Land Tenancy In Pakistan

“…If landlords cannot credibly commit to long-term contracts, then certain types of land specific investment will be underprovided by tenants, 4 whereas investment in owned land is obviously immune to holdup. 5 This is not the first paper to compare farming practices on tenanted and owned land, but it is the first paper of its type to study investment behavior. Seminal work by Bell (1977), followed by Shaban (1987), is concerned with static efficiency; i.e., with moral hazard in current production effort that can arise in share-tenancy.…”

“…5 This is not the first paper to compare farming practices on tenanted and owned land, but it is the first paper of its type to study investment behavior. Seminal work by Bell (1977), followed by Shaban (1987), is concerned with static efficiency; i.e., with moral hazard in current production effort that can arise in share-tenancy. Our approach, by 1 The notion of contractual 'incompleteness' is still viewed as somewhat ad hoc (see Tirole, 1999;Hart and Moore, 1999).…”