Showing papers on "Leasehold estate published in 1998"

Investment, Profit and Tenancy: The Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy

Abstract: The economy of the Roman Empire was dominated by the business of agriculture. It employed the vast majority of the Empire's labor force and provided the wealth on which the upper classes depended for their social privileges. Consequently, the way in which upper-class Romans maintained and profited from their agricultural investments played a crucial role in shaping the basic relationships characterizing the Roman economy.In "Investment, Profit, and Tenancy" Dennis P. Kehoe defines the economic mentality of upper-class Romans by analyzing the assumptions that Roman jurists in the "Digest" of Justinian made about investment and profit in agriculture as they addressed legal issues involving private property. In particular the author analyzes the duties of guardians in managing the property of their wards, and the bequeathing of agricultural property. He bases his analysis on Roman legal sources, which offer a comprehensive picture of the economic interests of upper-class Romans. Farm tenancy was crucial to these interests, and Kehoe carefully examines how Roman landowners contended with the legal, social, and economic institutions surrounding farm tenancy as they pursued security from their agricultural investments.Kehoe argues that Roman jurists offer a consistent picture of agriculture as a form of investment that was grounded in upper-class conceptions of the Roman economy. In the eyes of the jurists, agriculture represented the only form of investment capable of providing upper-class Romans with economic security, and this situation had important implications for the relationship between landowners and tenants. Landowners who sought economic stability from their agricultural holdings preferred to simplify the task of managing their estates by delegating the work and costs to their tenants. This tended to make landowners depend on the expertise and resources of tenants, which in turn gave the tenants significant bargaining power. This dynamic relationship is traced in the jurists' regulation of farm tenancy, as the jurists adapted Roman law to the economic realities of the Roman empire."Investment, Profit, and Tenancy" will be of interest to classicists as well as to scholars of preindustrial comparative economics.Dennis P. Kehoe is Professor of Classical Studies, Tulane University.

Transaction costs of allocating increased land value under public leasehold systems: Hong Kong

Abstract: Using Hong Kong as a case study, the paper explores the viability of four land-value-capture mechanisms available under public leasehold systems: initial land auctioning; contract modification; lease renewal; and, the collection of land rent. It is found that these mechanisms do not work equally well; instead, their viability depends largely on the context within which the contracting parties practise land leasing. By applying a modified transaction-costs framework to the case, it is shown that the transaction costs of allocating the land value at the initial land auction are the lowest among the four mechanisms. This explains why the Hong Kong government relies on public land auctions to capture land value. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this finding for Hong Kong and for countries where officials are experimenting with public leasehold systems.

Empowerment and efficiency : the economics of agrarian reform

Abstract: We analyze the effect of agricultural tenancy laws that offer security of tenure to tenants and regulate the share of output they should pay the landlord as rent on farm productivity. Theoretically, the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects. A bargaining power effect tends to improve the crop-share of tenants and hence improves their incentives in general. A security of tenure effect tends to encourage investment by the tenant on one hand, but on the other hand eliminates the possibility of using eviction threats as an incentive device by the landlord. Analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the Indian state of West Bengal in the late seventies suggests that tenancy reform played an important role in increasing agricultural productivity.

Where have all the sharecroppers gone? : black occupations in postbellum mississippi

Abstract: Postbellum southern agriculture was one of the most studied topics in United States economic history during the 1970s and early 1980s, in part because of an interest in African American life after slavery and because of an interest in sharecropping and other tenancy arrangements. Those in? terests were complementary at first, but as cliometric research on the South after slavery unfolded, they became substitutes for each other. As it turned out, fascination with sharecropping and institutional change distracted at? tention from the material conditions of ex-slave life. Indeed, all the re? search and writing does not answer the simple question, "How did African Americans make a living in the postbellum South?" The answer is implicit in the cliometric literature and explicit in economic history textbooks. As economic historians Jonathan Hughes and Louis P. Cain put it, "After mixed, and largely unhappy, experiences with attempts to institute work for hire, even efforts to restore gang labor, the South fell back upon alternate methods of putting its lands and people to work: various forms of tenancy and sharecropping_Ownership of land was still highly concentrated, but the old plantation lands were now largely subdivided into thousands of family-size farms."1

Property Rights for the Rural Poor: The Challenge of Landlessness

Abstract: The debate around the relative roles of markets versus bureaucrats took on renewed life with the end of the Cold War. The public policy debate shifted from focusing on the public sector to emphasizing markets and their ability to innovate, decentralize, use incentives and meet needs more effectively. Yet there remains in this public policy debate a stunning silence about the absence of property rights for the rural poor. This article focuses on the need to put property rights for the rural poor--the need for land reform--back on the international policy agenda. The first half of the article examines current land reform paradigms and looks at what has been learned, focusing on Brazil as a case study The second half of the article moves from what has been done to a discussion of where future research and operational work should go from here. There are 1.3 billion people around the world who live on less than U.S.$1 a day.(1) Even though urbanization has been one of the major features of development and change in the past decade, the majority of these poor still live in rural areas. Furthermore, there are rural roots to the urban poverty seen in most countries, as those without assets migrate to urban or semi-urban areas searching for work. Thus redistribution of assets is central to long-run progress on reducing poverty in both the city and the countryside. Researchers Michael Lipton and Jacques van der Gaag point out: For poverty reduction to succeed, the poor need some autochthonous source of income and safety. That is, they need to have an alternative, in the market place and in the polity, not to depend on a patron, monopolist or bureaucrat. Providing the poor with access to productive land is usually regarded as crucial.(2) Land reform is one of the most central steps in this process. The effectiveness of land-reform programs in improving productivity and reducing rural poverty relies on many factors including land quality, access to technology and strong local agricultural markets. However, access to land is the single most important prerequisite for improving economic conditions among the rural poor. Precisely because of the salience of land reform to the reduction of rural poverty, one of the major recommendations of this paper is that international donors should recommit themselves to land reform and begin financing the analytical work and technical assistance it requires. The current general silence and limited operational programming of donors on land reform exacerbates the rural poverty problem.(3) CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Over two decades ago, Peter Dorner, a major authority on land reform, cautioned: Land reform is so intimately related with the whole development process that one feels the need to deal with issues of development in general as well as with those more specifically identified with land reform. That requires simplification of complex and nationally specific experiences. No single body of theory encompasses all the strategic variables.(4) Dorner's definition of land reform includes measures to redistribute land in favor of peasants and small farmers and "... embraces consolidation and registration in areas where customary tenure is prevalent and also land settlement on new lands."(5) He places an additional emphasis on the need to make changes in tenancy rights. Each of these aspects goes to the core of rural politics, and nothing about them is easily simplified. Indeed, to think of land reform as only a technocratic or economic problem is a mistake. It is a political economy problem with economic and social consequences amenable to resolution through good technical skills and political change. As such, land reform is a central part of the whole development process. While development economists and agricultural economists have done most of the conceptual work on land reform, more recently attention has shifted to the ancillary fields of institutional theory (including organization theory), development management and law. …

Empowerment and Efficiency: The Economics of Agrarian Reform

Abstract: We analyze the effect of agricultural tenancy laws that offer security of tenure to tenants and regulate the share of output they should pay the landlord as rent on farm productivity. Theoretically, the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects. A bargaining power effect tends to improve the crop-share of tenants and hence improves their incentives in general. A security of tenure effect tends to encourage investment by the tenant on one hand, but on the other hand eliminates the possibility of using eviction threats as an incentive device by the landlord. Analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the Indian state of West Bengal in the late seventies suggests that tenancy reform played an important role in increasing agricultural productivity.

A Practical Approach to Landlord and Tenant

Abstract: This concise and readable title explains the fundamentals of landlord and tenant law. While the sheer bulk of legislation applying to this area of law can appear intimidating, A Practical Approach to Landlord and Tenant provides a systematic guide to the principles and practice which is ideal for student and practitioner alike. The book covers the basics of landlord and tenant law, providing extensive treatment of both the common law and the statutory codes, and explaining and analyzing more discrete areas such as leases, tenancy, assignment and subletting, agricultural holdings, business tenancies, and possession proceedings. The seventh edition has been comprehensively updated to cover all recent developments in landlord and tenant law. It includes coverage of all relevant case law and sets out the various statutory codes applying to both residential and business tenancies, highlighting key points. This edition considers in particular the impact of the Localism Act 2011. Very much a practical guide, this title makes frequent use of examples, checklists, forms and precedents, and is specifically designed to assist the busy professional and student. A Practical Approach to Landlord and Tenant is an indispensable resource for those working in this field. The A Practical Approach series is the perfect partner for practice work. Each title focuses on one field of the law and provides a comprehensive overview of the subject together with clear, practical advice and tips on issues likely to arise in practice. The books are also an excellent resource for those new to the law, where the expert overview and clear layout promote ease of understanding.

Risk and Incentives in Sharecropping: Evidence from Modern US Agriculture

Abstract: A new data set shows the extensive use of sharecropping in modern U.S. agriculture particularly in wheat, rice, corn, soybeans, and cotton. For these five crops, I investigate the importance of risk and three types of incentive problems that are commonly regarded to 'cause' sharecropping. A direct measure of risk from county level weather data is constructed and this measure is a major explanation in the choice between cash and share contracts. The potential for exploitation of the land by the tenant is also an important determinant of tenancy choice. Finally, for three inputs, fertilizer, petroleum products, and herbicides & pesticides, incentive problems in the provision of inputs by the tenant are shown to exist. For these inputs, I show that sharecroppers use less than cash renters, but this difference is eliminated when the costs of these inputs are also shared.

Agricultural Law: Principles and Cases

Abstract: Introduction to law and agricultural law torts contracts nature and meaning of property acquiring and disposing of real property rights and limitations in the ownership of agricultural property rights and limitations in the use of agricultural property liability for farm animals protecting the environment and the productivity of agricultural land water and drainage sales, warranties, and products liability marketing of agricultural products agricultural credit, finance, and bankruptcy agricultural labour, agents, and independent contractors farm tenancy farm partnerships corporate structure and formation farm estate planning.

The joint system of share tenancy and self‐cultivation: Evidence from Sind, Pakistan

Abstract: This article attempts to explain the existence of a particular system of production organisation involving share tenancy and wage labour cultivation that obtains in the southern regions of the Sind province in Pakistan. The explanation invokes selected features in the functioning of the labour market in an environment characterised by an unequal distribution of land ownership holdings and the availability of profitable new technologies of production. The emphasis is on structural, endowment related as well as market‐based features of the institutional form within the overall context of a labour‐based explanation. Published macro‐level data have been used as well as micro‐level survey‐based information on contractual arrangements to substantiate the argument.

Rural Development in Africa: The Role of Financial Markets

Abstract: The majority of the countries in Africa depend in large part on the rural sector. It is believed that the future development of these countries will depend in part on the successes or failures in nurturing, supporting and developing the rural areas and the rural economy, particularly in making more financial services available and accessible to rural sector inhabitants. The rural sector on the other hand, is served primarily by the rural financial markets (RFMs), a market often characterized as grossly inadequate, poorly developed, small and shallow. In this paper the rural economy and the financial markets are examined with emphasis on the role, experiences, constraints and prospects of these markets, in particular the informal financial markets, for promoting rural development. Key Words: Africa, rural financial markets, rural development The majority of countries in Africa, it is believed, depend for sustenance, in large part, on the rural sector. Future development of these countries, or the lack of it, it is also believed, will depend in part on the successes or failures in nurturing, supporting and developing the rural areas and the rural economy, particularly in improving the plight of rural households, including support for their activities. After all, the majority of the population in these countries live and work in the rural areas. The rural sector is served primarily by the informal financial markets (IFMs), which together make up a market often characterized as grossly inadequate, poorly developed, small and shallow. Regrettably, the lack of access to financial services is considered one of the major constraints to rural development in Africa, particularly to increasing investments and productive activities in the rural sector of LDCs. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that there is an observed heightened interest and efforts on the part of governments of African countries and Development Assistance Agencies (DAAs)2 alike to explore avenues to strengthen and expand the rural financial markets. This paper examines the rural economy and the informal financial markets in Africa, with particular emphasis on the role, experiences, constraints and prospects for promoting rural development. It also explores avenues for strengthening and expanding the rural financial markets. The Structure of Rural Economy The rural economy is characterized by the activities of rural inhabitants. The majority of these inhabitants in rural Africa are engaged in agriculture, often as smallholder farmers. Only a small number of rural inhabitants are engaged in non-agriculture, off-farm, income-generating activities (IGAs), often to supplement their agriculture-based income or are organized in these activities as the only earning activity and source of income. This latter group operate for the most part micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs)3. Agriculture Agriculture,in all but a few countries including the petroleum producing and exporting countries, represents the largest sector of the economy of most African countries, supporting 50% of the population and contributing substantially to the GDP and to export earnings. The agricultural sector is often characterized as comprising twosub-sectors: the smallholders who often cultivate on traditional or customary land, and the estate operators who manage leasehold and/or freehold land. Within each category, other classifications are possible, based on the size of land or holdings. To provide a complete picture of the rural sector in these countries, one must add another category comprised of operators of small-scale non-agricultural enterprises. Reliable data on these categories for African countries as a whole, however, are not available. Available data for some countries for these categories often vary and are at times incomplete. Smallholder Farmers The family is the primary source of labor in the smallholder subsector. …

Land Ownership, Farm Size, and Tenancy after the Civil War

Abstract: able to improve their relative status.' The competing story tells of a smoothly functioning agricultural ladder. Also constructed from the building blocks of census data, it is likewise consistent with rising tenancy rates and falling farm sizes. Microlevel studies beginning with the work of Merle Curti and Margaret and Allan Bogue and continued by Donald Winters, and Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman, among others, offer close-up views of midwestern land tenure. All indicate that the rising tenancy rate reflected a longer time spent on the lower rungs of the agricultural ladder with younger fanners building the wealth necessary to purchase their own land.2 If this more optimistic interpretation of the census data is correct, then data should show that some tenants eventually improved their relative status. New data show just such an improvement in the relative status of tenants. A case study of a Missouri township reinforces conclusions from these latter papers and other recent and detailed studies of local land markets.3 Even falrmers with little personal wealth and no real property were "neither exploited nor left behind" during the decades of economic growth in the North following the Civil War.4 The new data link the manuscripts of the decennial censuses of 1860, 1870, and 1880, for Salt River Township in Ralls County, Missouri, with

Tenancy as a Family Strategy in Mid-Nineteenth Century Ontario

Abstract: The scholarly discussion of tenancy focuses, for the most part, on issues of tenure systems and their political context, agricultural efficiency, economic develop? ment, and class relations. While such issues are of utmost importance in under? standing tenancy, why and how individual farm families might use tenancy, for their own family-related goals, has been largely overlooked. I would like to look at tenancy, therefore, from the perspective of the family historian. This analysis goes beyond the general explanations usually advanced by economists about why tenancy exists, such as the agricultural ladder, transaction costs, and risk sharing, and takes into account the family economy. Here rather than assuming that one rents out a farm or becomes a tenant farmer based solely on shortterm, rational, profit-oriented reasons, such factors as responsibility to one's kin, balancing the needs of family members and maintaining the family farm over the generations will be considered. This paper, therefore, examines how farm families?both owners and tenants?used renting as a "family strategy" for sur? vival and economic advancement.1 In revealing how tenancy was used in the life course transitions of individuals and the collective needs of the family unit at different stages in its life cycle, a deeper understanding ofthe role of tenancy is revealed. Several useful theories and models exist, within the framework of conven? tional economic theory which argue that tenancy emerges as individuals motivated by profit logically respond to the market forces of supply and demand. Scholars using these models argue that owners opt for renting out their land when the transaction costs of supervising, paying and getting labourers to honour their contract becomes too high, and tenancy becomes a more profitable arrangement.2 Either landlords profit from the rental income or, acting as speculators, they have their tenants improve the land and then sell it as the market in land escalates. Other economic models such as risk sharing and the agricultural ladder have been advanced that help shed light on tenancy from the tenant perspective. It is often argued that in agricultural systems where the risks of yields and prices are high, farmer owners and/or tenants will opt to share the risk through a tenancy arrangement.3 Related to risk sharing, the agricultural ladder posits that settlers, especially young farmers and immigrants, use tenancy as a rung on the agricultural ladder between labouring and ownership, and that rent? ing makes economic sense until such time as they acquire the requisite capitai and knowledge of land and farming techniques to make ownership a less risky and more viable enterprise.4 These economic models, however, do not fully explain the existence and util? ity of tenancy. Several anomalies exist that are not adequately explained within a

A Leibenstein–Hobbes–Walras Model of Sharecropping

Abstract: Circumstances under which share tenancy may emerge as a socially viable and incentive-compatible system of land-labor exchange are explored in a model incorporating Leibenstein’s nutrition-effort hypothesis, limited substitution possibilities and endogenous distribution. The model provides a Walrasian resolution of the traditional conundrum of production control under sharecropping. It is shown that a pure sharecropp ing equilibrium with tenant control exists when land is relatively abundant though land rent is zero under either a fixed-rent or wage system. With land relatively scarce, a nearly-symmetric equilibrium with landlord control also exists provided workers share income in the presence of unemployment.

Land and Labour Relations in South-West Bangladesh: Resources, Power and Conflict

Abstract: List of Tables and Figures - Abbreviations, Acronyms and Glossary - Acknowledgements - Introduction - The Contextual Framework of the Study - Tenancy Relations - Wage Labour Relations - Territorial Mobility of Labour - Rural Society and the State - Conclusions - Notes - References - Index

Rural Livelihoods and Agriculture in the Western Cape

Abstract: This volume results from a major and well-funded research project into strategies for land reform and the enhancement of rural livelihoods in South Africa, in which Merle and Michael Lipton have played an important coordinating role. A formidable array of researchers have made significant inputs. The chapters represent the work of some of the best informed specialists on South African rural and agrarian issues. The Western Cape is unusual in the context of South African agrarian history. It was the area first colonised by whites, and its indigenous Khoisan population was more completely displaced at an earlier phase than any other African group. Almost all of the region became demarcated into privately owned farmlands, and although small areas were occupied by coloured people, especially around missions, no 'significant rural land was reserved for Africans. Settler agriculture was based to a significant degree on slave labour and, later, wage labour. African tenancy, a major feature of many other parts of white-owned farmlands until the 1960s, has been less evident. As a result of early dispossession, few communities in the Western Cape are likely to be eligible to reclaim rural land under the Restitution Act, although a great many who suffered from removals under the Group Areas Act may have claims in cities and towns.

Evolution of information systems strategy in a financial services company

Abstract: In the past decades, the potential of information systems to support organizational activities and to attain competitive advantage has been widely recognised by academic literature as well as the business community. IS planning methods have been constructed in an attempt to use IS successfully in organizations. However, these planning methods have been found to be theoretically unsound and their practical usefulness has no empirical support. This paper reports a study of the evolution of an IS strategy within LeaseHold N.V., a global Dutch leasing company. This case study is informed by concepts that have been found promising in the area of organizational evolution. Our study suggests that the idea of co-evolution of IS with its organization is especially interesting.

Impacts of Changing Farmers' Land Control Patterns on Deforestation: A Case Study from Minangkabau Villages, West Sumatra, Indonesia.

Abstract: Deforestation by farmers has been aggravated rapidly since World War II in Indonesia, triggered by collapse of communities’ traditional forest and land control systems. The notion is popular that it is essential to ensure secure land tenure rights for farmers around forests, and encourage their sedentary farming through introduction of perennial crops for prevention of their forest encroachment. This article addresses impacts of changing farmers’ land control on their forest land use at six Minangkabau villages, West Sumatra. Communities evolved matrilineal and communal land tenure systems by the Minangkabau custom originally for rice growing, by which land must be owned and inherited jointly by women. The custom restricted individual farmers’ exclusive land holding while ensuring equitable resources allocation within a lineage. Although people could acquire new land by moving to unsettled forest areas, lineages or communities themselves held forests and vacant dryland jointly around their villages, which promoted farmers’ land sharing. Moreover, farmers have successfully introduced perennial cash crops on their communal land by separation of land and tree rights. Nevertheless, farmers’ pressure on forests is not yet alleviated because of their growing preference forexclusive land holding under break down of communal land control systems by recent socio-economic change, though the matrilineal land inheritance remains strong. Consequently, large farmers occupy much favorable land around their villages for their children, which is often left idle, while small farmers are forced to find new land in frontier forests. Tenancy of idle land is extremely difficult for tree crops owing to owner farmers’ exclusive land holding. Behind those problems communities’ ambivalent attitude comes to light toward land control, between “collectivism” stipulated by the persistent custom and “individualism” affected by the modernization. Effective forest conservation will depend largely on creation of new community-based land control mechanisms for equitable resource allocation as well as for individual farmers’ secure land holding.

Property Investment Appraisal Techniques: Applications

Abstract: This book is concerned with property investment and it is not intended to go into great detail on appraisal techniques. However, this chapter and the next will look at issues related to conventional and contemporary appraisal techniques. For a more detailed exposition of the fundamentals, you are referred to Enever and Isaac (1995) and Isaac and Steley (1991). This chapter looks at reversionary property, leasehold interests, growth and inflation and valuation accuracy.

A case for partnership: the local authority landlord and the local police

Abstract: The partnership approach to crime reduction and antisocial behavior is now well-established in the academic literature and the op- erational reality of many agencies. A more recent, and still developing aspect of such initiatives in the U.K., is the use of civil statutes along- side criminal law to tackle criminal and nuisance behavior. This paper features two case studies that describe the use of two civil instruments, injunctions and evictions, and the joint police-housing department op- erations that utilized them. The creation of a housing Tenancy Enforce- ment Team in Gateshead, Newcastle, represented an innovative ap- proach to the enforcement of housing department tenancy agreements. An initiative by the local police and Hackney Housing department in London involved a criminal investigation and the test use of local council legal powers. The development, process and impact of both initiatives are discussed. The cases suggest that the partnership approach can strengthen both criminal and civil actions through the exchange of in- formation and mutual enforcement support. This paper will discuss initiatives undertaken by what are known in the U.K. as local authority housing departments. Local authority is a term for the city or area council (e.g., Newcastle City Council), led by elected officials, that provides local (non-federal) governments with essential services such as education and housing. Such a body spends its budget and — as a legal entity — is able to instigate legal proceedings as its elected leaders and professional staff deem fit. Funding for such services, including the housing department that