Showing papers on "Leasehold estate published in 1988"

Theories of Share Tenancy: A Critical Survey

Abstract: For the past 2 decades the problems of agricultural tenancy have attracted a great deal of attention not only from agricultural economists but also from economists in general as a typical example of agencyprincipal contract relations. Despite the prolific growth of literature, both theoretical and empirical, there has been little convergence in opinions on tenancy contracts. The divergence has been especially great on the understanding of the causes and the effects of sharecropping tenancy. Much confusion underlying the widely divergent perspectives has stemmed from partial treatments of contractual choice which unduly limit the optimizing behavior of contracting parties and the options of contract forms. This essay aims at clarifying the sources of the confusion by reviewing the past literature in light of the more general theory of agency-principal relations (the agency theory).' In order to examine the problems of various theoretical models in a unified framework, in Section II we first develop the basic framework of a general model of tenancy contract. In Section III we clarify, in terms of the general model, contradictions latent in the traditional Marshallian theory, which asserts that share tenancy is inefficient because of the disincentive effect of cropsharing on the tenant's work effort. In Section IV we attempt to show that recent efforts to reconstruct the theory based on the traditional assumption have not yet been quite successful. Section V draws implications and testable hypotheses from more general theories, incorporating the aspects of risk and uncertainty. Section VI tests allocational and distributional implications of those alternative hypotheses based on the summary of evidence col

Property rights and rural resource management: the case of tree crops in West Africa

Abstract: The spread of tree trop cnltivation in the West African hmnid zone has led to the commercialization of rights in tree trop farms, but not to the full privatization of rights in land. For one thing, rights in trees may be held and exchanged separately from rights in land. Also, inheritance, tenancy, and some labor arrangements often create multiple rights in trees and hence counteract privatization. Over time, individuals’ control over tree trop farms has depended more on their ability to exercise their claims vis a vis those of other rightholders, than on the way in which they acquired their rights in the first place. In this article, this argument is developed with reference to women’s control over tree crops, and the role of sharecropping and other labor arrangements in defining rights in farms.

The effects of housing distortions on unemployment

Abstract: THE HOUSING market in Britain is the object of massive government intervention. This is of four main types: the Rent Acts, the subsidising of council house rents, the subsidy to owner-occupiers through mortgage tax reliefs and the system of planning restrictions on housing land. Some of the motives for this intervention appear to have been: the avoidance of tenant 'exploitation' (Rent Acts), welfare support to poorer people but tied to housing to ensure no diversion into other expenditure (council rents), the building of a 'property-owning democracy' (mortgage relief) and the protection of the environment (planning). All are regarded as 'politically sensitive'-i.e., big potential vote-winners or -losers. This paper is concerned with measuring the effects of this intervention on mobility and unemployment. Previous work bearing on this issue is Hughes and McCormick (1984) which found evidence that council house tenancy restricted interregional mobility. It might be inferred that unemployment in regions with potential emigrants would be thereby aggravated; this is what is implied by the new classical theory of the labour market set out in Minford (1983). In this paper we investigate how far housing and other distortions contribute to regional and national unemployment as this theory indicates. The 'national' market for housing is a unified market. Home owners may move from one region to another, selling and buying houses at the free market rate. Private renters may do the same, exchanging one rent for another in the (limited) free market. This links house and land prices across the country; it also means that home owners and private renters will move freely to wherever in the country they can obtain the highest (hedonic) real wage and so the house market does not obstruct mobility. However it is not the end of the story. Someone who rents a council house in one region will have the greatest difficulty in renting one in another region; therefore to move he will have to rent or buy a house in the free private sector and give up his council house together with his subsidised rent. This limits mobility among council house tenants. It particularly does so among unemployed council house tenants who might move otherwise to take a job; for such people enjoy not merely subsidised council rents but also (as unemployed on supplementary benefits) 100% rebates of both rent and rates, whereas if they move and take a job they will pay full private rents (or mortgages) and lose their rebates (or much of them depending on their eligibility for Housing Benefit). Similar arguments apply to people in

Rationing and Adjustment in the Market for Tenancies: The Behavior of Landowning Households in Thanjavur District

Abstract: A large proportion of peasants cultivate only their own land, even when there are active markets for tenancies as well as labor. However, rationing of tenancies can occur under moral hazard or adverse selection. A model that includes as possible outcomes both rationing and full adjustment through trading is analyzed and estimated using data from South India. On this basis, households can be characterized as rationed or adjusted, and confidence intervals for these assignments can be calculated. While some households achieved full adjustment, a majority were rationed in the tenancy market, many of them completely.

Prospects for equitable growth in rural sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: Improving agricultural technology equitably in Africa has been difficult in the past because of the vast differences, as well as weak institutions and infrastructure in its many regions. However, the prospects for equitable growth are good for several reasons. The distribution of land has not deteriorated, and there are few landless people in Africa. Technical packages do not favor large farms over small ones, and Africa's social institutions support people with a safety net for sources of income. The author, however, points out that equitable growth, though possible is not assured and several research and policy initiatives will be needed to capitalize on the potential. First, research must continue to focus on technology appropriate for small farms and crops. Policy makers must no longer withhold assistance from service enterprises or nonfarm activities of women. Rural infrastructure has to be upgraded, and finally, governments will need to monitor land tenure and tenancy.

Tenancy in South Asia

Abstract: Although many people argue that tenurial systems in South Asia hinder technological innovation in agriculture and prevent the benefits of such innovation from reaching the tenant, the author of this paper rejects such thinking. In this paper taken from his research on the institutional structures and relationships that shape South Asia's rural economy, the author examines tenancy in South Asia and challenges the claims that landholding systems and structures are the prime source of the subcontinent's agricultural woes. He contends that the adoption of Green Revolution technologies has increased the demand for labor and boosted real agricultural wages. The ensuing agricultural growth has broken down many institutional, social, and cultural barriers previously facing the poor. This growth, when combined with measures to increase small farm productivity and wage employment, alleviates rural poverty. The author sees radical reforms as quick and disruptive solutions to the problems of the rural poor. The real priorities for policymakers are measures to speed agricultural growth and to provide the physical and institutional infrastructure needed to sustain it.

Law and Agrarian Society in India: The Case of Bihar and the Nineteenth-Century Tenancy Debate

Abstract: David Washbrook's original treatment of the question of law and society, to which the title of the present paper refers, has not yet stimulated the response which might have been expected. It is a wideranging study; only part of it will be taken up in this paper, namely its arguments about landed property rights in the nineteenth century. Washbrook states that in the first half of the century private property in land remained a ‘pure farce’ in India because of continued state involvement in the economy, excessive revenue demands, the persistence of personal law (as codified), and the weakness of the system of courts. He emphasizes the political implications of the co-option of dominant groups for revenue collection and other purposes of British administration. For the second half of the century, Washbrook proposes an improvement in the position of landed and powerful interests, as the law at last ‘beat back the frontier’ of personal law and disentangled private property rights from family and communal fetters.

Rethinking Tenancy: Explaining Spatial and Temporal Variation in Late Imperial and Republican China

Abstract: the tenants or hired laborers of wealthy landlords. This essay demonstrates the improbability of such a scenario and establishes its opposite: that rates of tenancy and concentration of landownership rise, not in periods of economic decline but in periods of prosperity, and not through debt-sales but through the alternate processes of reclamation, migration, and changes in the mode of landlord farm management. The debt-sale paradigm has impeded our ability to comprehend how varying economic conditions operate through more than one process to create regional and temporal variations in tenancy rates and ownership concentration. A number of studies document the contribution of non-debt-sale land tenure processes to high tenancy and concentration levels, but the challenge that their anomalous results pose to the prevailing debt-sale paradigm has been blunted by the absence of an alternative theoretical framework. This essay exposes contradictions within the debt-sale paradigm and demonstrates how not one but a variety of distinct processes can produce high levels of tenancy and ownership concentration (and, under other conditions, low levels). An alternative theoretical framework is constructed that integrates the anomalous results of previous studies and provides hypotheses to guide future research. Rethinking the means through which high rates of tenancy and concentration of landownership are generated will improve our understanding of the dynamics of rural class relations in late imperial and prerevolutionary China. Awareness of the multiplicity of processes capable of generating high rates of

Agrarian change, farm size, tenancy and land fragmentation in India's semi-arid tropics.

Abstract: Much of the prevailing wisdom about agrarian change in South Asia stems from perceptions about and experiences in irrigated agriculture, particularly in the indo-Gangetic plain. Views about the 'frozen', uncompetitive nature of land markets, economic polarization, distress sales as a means to accumulate land, increasing landlessness, landlords' exploitation of tenants, and extreme fragmentation of holdings are common (Myrdal. 1968; Ladejinsky, 1965).

Land and Labor in China

Abstract: This is a critical examination of a study by Kang Chao on Chinese socioeconomic history during the last 2000 years. The author comments that "Chao...sees Chinese economic history as turning on the hinge of the population/land ratio diminishing returns and the institutional responses to those two processes....Chaos theory and his interpretation of institutional adjustments however are not easily supported by quantitative evidence about wage rates population pressure and agricultural yields. Moreover analyzing economic trends during all these centuries Chao neglects their context in terms of the whole institutional structure of tenancy of state policies of household reproductive behavior of rural customary law and of land settlement phases." (EXCERPT)

Farming Someone Else's Land: Farm Tenancy in the Texas Brazos River Valley, 1850-1880

Abstract: This dissertation develops and utilizes a methodology for combining data drawn from the manuscript census returns and the county tax rolls to study landless farmers during the period from 1850 until 1880 in three Texas Brazos River Valley counties: Fort Bend, Milam, and Palo Pinto. It focuses in particular on those landless farmers who appear to have had no option other than tenant farming. It concludes that there were such landless farmers throughout the period, although they were a relatively insignificant factor in the agricultural economy before the Civil War. During the Antebellum decade, poor tenant farmers were a higher proportion of the population on the frontier than in the interior, but throughout the period, they were found in higher numbers in the central portion of the river valley. White tenants generally avoided the coastal plantation areas, although by 1880, that pattern seemed to be changing. Emancipation had tremendous impact on both black and white landless farmers. Although both groups were now theoretically competing for the same resource, productive crop land, their reactions during the first fifteen years were so different that it suggests two systems of tenant farming divided by caste. As population expansion put increasing pressure on the land, the two systems began to merge on terms resembling those under which black tenants had always labored.

Agrarian Change, Farm Size, Tenancy and Land Fragmentation in India's Semi-Arid Tropics

Abstract: Much of the prevailing wisdom about agrarian change in South Asia stems from perceptions about and experiences in irrigated agriculture, particularly in the indo-Gangetic plain. Views about the 'frozen', uncompetitive nature of land markets, economic polarization, distress sales as a means to accumulate land, increasing landlessness, landlords' exploitation of tenants, and extreme fragmentation of holdings are common (Myrdal. 1968; Ladejinsky, 1965).