Showing papers on "Leasehold estate published in 2020"

Collective influence of household and community capitals on agricultural employment as a measure of rural poverty in the Mahanadi Delta, India.

Abstract: The main determinants of agricultural employment are related to households’ access to private assets and the influence of inherited social–economic stratification and power relationships. However, despite the recommendations of rural studies which have shown the importance of multilevel approaches to rural poverty, very few studies have explored quantitatively the effects of common-pool resources and household livelihood capitals on agricultural employment. Understanding the influence of access to both common-pool resources and private assets on rural livelihoods can enrich our understanding of the drivers of rural poverty in agrarian societies, which is central to achieving sustainable development pathways. Based on a participatory assessment conducted in rural communities in India, this paper differentiates two levels of livelihood capitals (household capitals and community capitals) and quantifies them using national census data and remotely sensed satellite sensor data. We characterise the effects of these two levels of livelihood capitals on precarious agricultural employment by using multilevel logistic regression. Our study brings a new perspective on livelihood studies and rural economics by demonstrating that common-pool resources and private assets do not have the same effect on agricultural livelihoods. It identifies that a lack of access to human, financial and social capitals at the household level increases the levels of precarious agricultural employment, such as daily-wage agricultural labour. Households located in communities with greater access to collective natural capital are less likely to be agricultural labourers. The statistical models also show that proximity to rural centres and access to financial infrastructures increase the likelihood of being a landless agricultural labourer. These findings suggest that investment in rural infrastructure might increase livelihood vulnerability, if not accompanied by an improvement in the provisioning of complementary rural services, such as access to rural finance, and by the implementation of agricultural tenancy laws to protect smallholders’ productive assets.

Colonial Origins, Property Rights, and the Organization of Agricultural Production: the US Midwest and Argentine Pampas Compared

Abstract: We examine the origins, persistence, and economic consequences of institutional structures of agricultural production. We compare farms in the Argentine Pampas and US Midwest, regions of similar potential input and output mixes. The focus is on 1910-1914, during the international grain trade boom and when census data are available. The Midwest was characterized by small farms and family labor. Land was a commercial asset and traded routinely. The Pampas was characterized by large landholdings and use of external labor. Land was a source of status and held across generations. Status attributes could not be easily monetized for trade, reducing market exchange, limiting entry, and hindering farm restructuring. Differing land property rights followed from English and Spanish colonial and post-independence policies. Geo-climatic factors cannot explain dissimilarities in farm sizes, tenancy, and output mixes, suggesting institutional constraints. Midwest farmers also were more responsive to exogenous signals. There is evidence of moral hazard on Pampas farms. Conjectures on long-term development are provided. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Land Law in Chinese History

Abstract: Although land law or “real property law” is but one of several branches of what scholars commonly call “economic law,” or laws that regulate everyday economic activity, its history has drawn, over the past several decades, an unusually large amount of attention from legal theorists, economists, and comparative scholars of all methodological orientations. This has been especially true within the field of Chinese legal history: few scholars outside the field have any clear sense of pre-modern, early modern, or even modern Chinese family law, the law of personal injury, or even criminal law, but a much larger number will likely have some impression of historical Chinese land law, and may even have an educated opinion about it. This is not because land law was any more important to everyday socioeconomic life than those other bodies of law, but rather because land law has played a much larger role in theoretical and comparative scholarship, particularly in scholarship that seeks to explain global economic divergence—specifically, the divergence between China and the West in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Although this literature has perpetrated its share of myths about Chinese property institutions, much progress has been made over the past few decades, to the point where something approaching an academic consensus on core institutional features has emerged. This chapter outlines these core features of Chinese land law, focusing primarily on the late imperial era, and provides a short summary of how the field arrived at them. Whereas it was once thought that Chinese property rights were comparatively less secure or less alienable than Western European property rights, it now seems unlikely that major differences existed at this general level. They did exist, however, in the finer institutional details of tenancy law and collateralization instruments, and potentially in inheritance law as well. In these latter features, Chinese land law tended to produce institutional incentives that leveled and fractured the pattern of rural landholding, thereby reinforcing the economic dominance of household-level production throughout the late imperial era, and well into the 20th Century. The chapter then discusses relatively recent trends in the academic literature, reaching back to 1970s and 1980s, when the study of Chinese land law became deeply intertwined with debates over economic divergence. It concludes by briefly pondering the costs and benefits of such intertwinement, and what it means to study “the history of Chinese land law” as a consolidated subject.

Transhumance, Climate Change and Conflicts: Reflections on the Legal Implications of Grazing Reserves and Ruga Settlements in Nigeria

Abstract: In recent times, clash after clash has arisen between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria. These conflicts were linked to the effects of climate change in northern Nigeria, but have been exacerbated by other factors including ethno-religious sentiments. Herdsmen forced to migrate southwards face intense competition for arable and grazing land with the farmers in Nigeria's middle belt. This invariably leads to conflicts, often resulting in gruesome murder and carnage. Thousands have died, many more have been maimed and millions displaced because of this crisis. As a solution, the Nigerian government proposes to set up grazing reserves and rural grazing area settlements in all states of the federation. The problem with this proposal is how and where to obtain the land. This article reflects on the legal implications of the proposal and argues in favour of grazing reserves and ranching on the basis of a private freehold / leasehold tenure arrangement, not through the compulsory acquisition of land by the government.

The demand-side determinants of multiple property ownership in Spain

Abstract: Home ownership is the usual form of tenancy in Spain and is particularly widespread across all social classes for different historical and cultural reasons. In this context, multiple property owner...

Owned Australian corporate real estate reporting ahead of IFRS 16

Abstract: International Reporting Financial Standard (IFRS) 16 aims to improve transparency in reporting Corporate Real Estate (CRE) commitments. Aimed at leasehold issues, its introduction may affect CRE ow...

State of maintenance in relation to property regime, tenancy and uses of a large sample of residential buildings located in the most vulnerable areas of the city of Barcelona

Abstract: In a context of downturn of public investment after the financial crisis of 2007, an increase of social and economic inequality takes place in territories and cities. Socio-residential vulnerability is intensified in certain urban areas where processes of socioeconomic and socio-spatial regression are related with the resident population difficulties to access resources for the intervention and maintenance of an aging residential building stock that gradually decays. Mediterranean cities in Southern Europe and precisely the city of Barcelona face the added difficulty of counting with a residential built stock of mostly private property, accounting many situations of horizontal property in which each building is managed by a community of owners who are not necessary householders and users. The present study consists of an analysis of the relation between the state of maintenance of residential buildings and the property regime, tenancy and uses, based on the observation of common spaces and elements of a large sample of buildings located in the most vulnerable areas of the city of Barcelona. The provided results can contribute to foster improvements in future public rehabilitation programs and policies. Particularly according to local challenges to guarantee and promote durability of a mostly privatelyowned residential built stock that is located in areas where socioeconomic difficulties hinder the residents’ capacity to carry out rehabilitation or maintenance actions. Management of the maintenance of the residential built stock must take into account the repercussion of particularities in property regimes, tenancy and uses, especially when it refers to common spaces and elements of residential buildings.

Spatio-temporal land use/land cover changes induced flat housing expansion pattern: implications for microenterprises’ growth opportunity in Shashemene City, Ethiopia

Abstract: The extraordinary rate of urban growth in developing countries causes expansion of cities towards their outskirts resulting in work space insufficiency and unsuitableness to microenterprises. However, this situation has received insignificant emphases/coverage within latest interdisciplinary literatures surveyed. So, the main objective of the current study was to investigate the effect of urban flat housing expansion on the user-friendliness of premises to selected micro businesses in Shashemene City, West Arsi Zone, Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia. Simple random sampling was employed to select a total of 240 businesses. The obtained data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively/description and revealed that businesses are suffering from paucity, unsuitableness, high- priced premises and frequent location shift for the work places, lack of expediency and infrastructure. Furthermore, the findings of this study revealed that permanency of selected business in familiarized location depends on their financial strength and experiences on the same business. Thus, it could be suggested that authorities need to practice measures like; business clusters development, creating coalitions among chambers of commerce for construction of common use multiplex business premises, and also involve share companies or private developers; revisit urban land leasehold proclamation performance and construction works progress in the City.

Mitigating Catastrophic Risks and Food Security Threats: Effects of Land Ownership in Southern Punjab, Pakistan.

Abstract: In the wake of environmental challenges, the adoption of risk management strategies is imperative to achieve sustainable agricultural production and food security among the Pakistani farmers of Punjab. For a deeper insight into farmers' adaptive behavior towards climate change, this study explored the role of land tenancy in the adoption of risk management instruments, such as off-farm diversification, improved varieties, and crop insurance. Off-farm diversification was found to be a preferred instrument among landless tenants. The study also employed a multivariate probit model that further signified the role of land tenure in risk-related decisions. Apart from land tenancy, the results identified the prominence of risk perception, information access, and extension access in adoption decisions. This study also investigated the association between risk management approaches and food security indicators (household hunger scale, food consumption score). Analysis revealed a significant association between risk management tools and food security indicators.

Sharecropping arrangement in the contemporary agricultural economy of Ghana: A study of Techiman North District and Sefwi Wiawso Municipality, Ghana

Abstract: The desire for plantation farms and the availability of fertile uncultivated lands coupled with the influx of migrant farmers into the plantation frontiers during the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries largely occasioned the emergence of the share cropping mechanism in the then Gold Coast. Using two districts in Ghana, this study examined sharecroppers land access mode in the contemporary agricultural economy of Ghana. Mixed methods research was used in this study and focused on sharecrop-tenants as well as the sharecrop-landlords as the key research respondents. The results show that across the two areas, abunu system of tenancy was the dominant sharecropping arrangement. The benefit share of the landlord has moved from one-third (1/3) per the traditional abusa tenant system to 50% under the modern abunu system for tree crop plantations. The tenant-farmers’ percentage share has, however, declined from 2/3 to ½ under the current abunu system and in some cases the sharing arrangement is restricted to the proceeds and not the land. Again, the tenants now have to make upfront monetary payment in order to access land, which was not the case in the past. The share tenancy arrangement is on an evolutionary trajectory towards equalizing entitlements to proceeds, in a manner that seems to disadvantage the tenant farmers and keep them in the cycle of tenancy. The study underscores the need for further research to fully understand the drivers of these variations and emerging trends of the sharecropping land access dynamics for an informed policy response.

What Drives Take-up in Land Regularization: Ecuador’s Rural Land Regularization and Administration Program, Sigtierras

Abstract: During the past decades, land regularization and administration programs have become part of the development tool box to improve the welfare of rural farmers. However, these programs cannot produce the intended economic benefits if people choose not to enroll in them. In this context, this paper investigates how household, plot, and community characteristics, as sources of informal property rights, explain the low take-up (less than 15%) of land regularization under the National Rural Land Information and Management System Program (Sigtierras Program) in Ecuador. Using newly collected survey data combined with census tract-level data and administrative project data, we assess how different household-, plot-, and community-level characteristics affect the likelihood of take-up of legal support to regularize tenancy offered by Sigtierras. Our results suggest that some household-specific and community-level characteristics that enhance a household’s ownership claim are important determinants of take-up. Our empirical results provide insights to inform targeting strategies to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of future land regularization efforts in Ecuador.

Access to Land and Tenancy Practices on Tanah Bengkok: Evidence from Java, Indonesia

Abstract: Tanah bengkok (bengkok land) in Java, Indonesia boasts a unique institution where elected village leaders receive usufruct rights to a parcel of land owned by the village, in lieu of salary. Despite its relevance to the political economy of land distribution in Java, unavailability of systematic data has so far constrained in-depth empirical research on bengkok land. In 2018, we conducted a survey covering 130 villages and more than 1,800 households in Java. We found substantial heterogeneity in the incidence and use patterns of bengkok land across villages. Fixed rental tenancy appeared more prevalent than sharecropping on bengkok land and bengkok landlords seldom got involved in tenants' farming decisions, which made bengkok land management look more 'business-like'. Finally, evidence is consistent with political cycles as the village heads with reelection motives offered sharecropping contracts to non-relatives to garner a larger pool of supporters.

Tenancy by the Entirety and the Value of Wealth Insurance for Entrepreneurs

Abstract: This paper explores the willingness of entrepreneurs to pay for wealth insurance to protect personal assets in case of business failure and the impact of this strategy on small business operation decisions. I show that antidiscrimination laws allow married firm owners in half of U.S. states to choose between asset protection and having more collateral for business funding, allowing entrepreneurs to reveal their valuation for preserving personal assets at time of failure. I find that firm owners value asset protection offered by tenancy by the entirety laws at $900-$1000 per year. Firms receive smaller loans when entrepreneurs use this form of ownership to reduce the personal costs of firm failure, but show no differences in hiring patterns or spending on risky projects. This strategy of preparation in case of failure appears to affect small businesses through the funding channel.

Property and Sovereignty: Creating, Destroying and Resurrecting Property Rights in British India (1600 - 1800)

Abstract: This paper, the first in a series of three papers, constitutes the first systematic legal attempt since the late nineteenth century to describe the changing configuration of property rights of zamindars (landlords) and ryots or raiyats (peasants) relative to the English East India Company in colonial India over a period of two hundred years from 1600 to 1800 This period begins with the Company’s first arrival in India to the court of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir in 1600 as merely a trading company It ends with the introduction of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal by Lord Cornwallis, the Governor General of Bengal in 1793, pursuant to the Company’s exercise of sovereign authority over the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa As described in the paper, during this period of great political upheaval, scandal, and intrigue, as the East India Company gradually transitioned from a monopoly trading company to a conquering and then an administering power, Company officials, including the Governor General, and later the Supreme Council of Bengal, created, destroyed, and resurrected property rights of landlords and tenant cultivators Following a series of experiments with land revenue administration and the lives of zamindars and raiyats, with the sole objective of maximising revenue for the East India Company, Lord Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement of Land Revenue in 1793, which completely destroyed the rights of peasant cultivators in favour of zamindars, and wreaked great injustice and misery upon the people of Bengal It would take nearly seventy years for British government to begin to reverse this injustice through tenancy protection legislation enacted in 1859, and this reversal in law would only be completed following land reforms introduced by provincial governments post India’s independence in 1947 These later developments will be the subject of the next two papers in this series

Characterising Land and Property Related Litigation at the Delhi High Court

Abstract: There are three popular conjectures regarding litigation related to land and property. First, disputes over land and property are thought to form a large proportion of the case-load of Indian courts. Second, the quality of land records is to blame for the large volume and length of land and property-related litigation. Third, the complexity created by the sheer multitude of laws that govern land and property is to blame. Additionally, it is also thought that the Government is the single largest litigant in the constitutional courts. In this paper, we present a novel dataset of case-level data from the Delhi High Court and attempt to test these conjectures. We attempt to answer important questions regarding the volume, duration, and typologies of land and property-related disputes, as well as the typologies of litigants. We find that in the Delhi High Court, disputes related to land and property constitute 36% of the total substantive civil litigation. Further, the largest proportion of civil disputes, by far, is between private parties. The Government is a party to 50\% of all civil disputes, and it is the petitioner/appellant only in 7% of civil disputes. We further find that disputes related to tenancy/eviction, land acquisition and allotment of houses by DDA are the three most common types of disputes related to immovable property. Disputes originating from and related to issues in land records form a small proportion of the total disputes related to immovable property.

Spreadsheet Iteration of Reversionary Leasehold Rental Growth Rate Within The Framework of Explicit DCF Appraisals

Abstract: Income growth rates are required to justify decisions and strategies for property investments. Although existing studies addressed this phenomenon in freehold investments, a relative question regarding the determination of rental growth rates of leasehold investment properties valued part-way through rent review periods has not been addressed before now. This study examined the spreadsheet-assisted scenario analysis tools and techniques that are required for the determination of rental growth rates of leasehold investment properties valued part-way through rent review periods. A precursor to the scenario analysis was the development of a hybrid leasehold DCF valuation model arising from the equation of the formula for reversionary leasehold equivalent yield valuation to the formula for reversionary leasehold growth explicit DCF valuation model; thereby culminating into the identification of four unknown variables comprising the all risks yield and the implied growth rates of leasehold cash inflows and cash outflows which were subsequently derived using the solver tool of Excel ® . From a total of eleven scenarios generated, the 9th successive scenario produced optimal results indicating zero slack between iterated and calculated values for the growth rates of leasehold cash inflows and cash outflows respectively. With recourse to the hybrid leasehold DCF valuation model, the spreadsheet-assisted scenario was found to produce mathematically valid growth rates that justify the valuation of leasehold investment properties part-way through rent review periods. The value of this research is the analytical tools and rigour it avails investors seeking income returns and growth from reversionary leasehold property as an instance of terminable investments.

Lease Finance in Nigeria: Current Status, Challenges and Future Prospects

Abstract: Objective – The Leasing industry in Nigeria is witnessing increased demand for assets under a given prevalence of rising domestic costs of purchase, shortage of foreign exchange for imports as well as persistent depreciation of the Naira. The objective of this paper is to analyze the current state of lease financing in Nigeria, the prospects and challenges with a view to assess the capacity of the industry to continue to provide this form of finance. Design/methodology –The paper adopts an exploratory research design with references to publications, websites and research articles relevant to the subject matter. A number of relevant publications on leasing in Nigeria were duly explored. Results – Our findings show that, the volume of lease finance has consistently grown over the last 14 years (2005-2018). Finance leases volume totaled 1.68 trillion naira in 2018 alone. Banks as market participants in the Nigerian lease industry finance other non-bank lessors while the non-bank lessors account for about 80% of lease transactions mostly to Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs). Funding remains a major challenge restricting provision of leases to general supporting equipment and constraining leases of specialized assets (big-ticket leases). Prospects for lease finance obtain in terms of rising popularity of operating leases with lessors and lessees, attributable to the inherent mitigation against default risk. There is also potential for a growing customer base beyond MSMEs, with the influx of patronage by listed corporate firms especially those in the healthcare and education sectors. We identified financing partnerships, development of sound corporate governance practices, hastened inauguration of the Equipment Leasing Registration Authority and increased sensitization of potential leasehold product consumers on the benefits of lease finance, as critical success factors for the lease industry in Nigeria.

Implementation of the concept of "family" in the modern society

Abstract: There is a continuous debate in the public space on the need for a legal framework for the partnership institute to ensure equal legal security for the family, regardless of the existence or non-existence of the legal fact of its foundation. The fundamental aspects of the debate include the insufficient regulatory framework and vulnerability of partners before the law, divergent national views on partnerships as a union between opposite-sex partners, religious beliefs condemning non-marital relationships, including the existing property issues in the context of partnerships. According to the Author of the Paper, the existing partnerships in Latvia are discriminated in favour for the marriage due to the moral views and legal aspects, as the individual living in the partnership is restricted in terms of access to information and is vulnerable in terms of property rights. For example, when an individual lives in the partnership, he or she is denied the right to be informed about the health status of the other partner and the existing liabilities in credit institutions. In cohabitation, the individual is not recognised as a member of the family of the tenant for the purpose of the Law on Residential Tenancy and the potential consequences of the partnership may be the denied right to inheritance or tenancy. Main methods used: sociological method for analysing the compliance of laws and regulations with public interests and aims.

Globalising Agrarian Markets and Changing Production Relations: Village-Level Evidence from India

Abstract: This chapter examines the changes in the rural, agrarian economy of India, through a two-period survey of a village in Rajasthan. It is found that the increasing number of uneconomic farm plots due to the continuous division of land and lack of alternative job opportunities in rural areas have profoundly affected the tenancy relations. It is the marginal farmers who are leasing out land as cultivation has become unviable due to high fragmentation and uneconomic size of farm plots. A resurvey of the villages revealed the ground-level implications of price fluctuations in the world market. With an increase in the price of a single crop, self-cultivation became profitable, leading to a fall in tenancy, which in turn, had an adverse impact on the livelihood of marginal and landless tenant farmers pushing them into the labour market.

Tenant Organizing and the Campaign for Collective Bargaining Rights in British Columbia, 1968–75

Abstract: British Columbia’s Residential Tenancy Act is premised on an understanding of residential tenancies as individual contractual relationships. Tenants cannot engage in collective action against their landlords for fear of breaching their contractual obligations. However, there was a time when associations of tenants nearly secured collective bargaining rights and the recognition of tenants as a class with significant influence in the municipal regulation of residential tenancies. This paper explores the history of the tenants’ movement, 1968–75, that struggled and failed to obtain collective bargaining rights for tenants. It follows the growth of the tenants’ movement from collectives of tenants in individual apartment complexes to a provincial coalition of tenants’ associations that achieved significant protections for tenants in municipal by-laws and provincial legislation. It then chronicles how the New Democratic Party government of 1972–75 was elected on a promise to grant collective bargaining rights to tenants but instead denied class rights in favour of establishing a provincially-regulated administrative body to mediate individual disputes. The basic shape and structure of today’s Residential Tenancy Act can be traced to the reforms of this period.

Judeans in Elephantine and Babylonia: A Case Study on Rights and Tenancy Status

Abstract: Abstract This paper is a case study that discusses Judean rights and tenancy in Egypt under the Persian administration. It uses TAD A6.11, a Persian Aramaic decree about farmland rights in Egypt, as an example of an imperial document to mediate a comparison between the Babylonian Judean experience in farmlands and Egyptian Judean experience on the (sub-)urban island of Elephantine under Persian rule. First a Babylonian Judean document, CUSAS 28 no. 69 is used to interpret the enigmatic, yet central legal claim about crushing the ilku-tax in TAD A6.11. The two sources are then compared, and the implications of the findings are studied by referring to documents of Elephantine Judeans regarding tenancy rights (mhḥsn-status). The findings demonstrate that the two communities are socially comparable, so long as the Persian administrative system is considered in a comparison of the communities’ surviving documents.

The Impact of Land Act of 1995 on Customary, State and Church Lands

Abstract: The article sets out to examine the concept of customary or traditional land within the context of Zambia’s dual land system that is categorized as: customary/traditional land. In turn, the traditional land is controlled, allocated, and regulated through the Chiefs. Then there is formal land that is owned and controlled by the State through the Commissioner of Lands who works in consultation with the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, in conjunction with the Ministry of Local Government and its District Councils. The article will thus examine the history of dual land system in Zambia; and will further evaluate the Land Act of 1995, whose purpose was to propose a wave of new land system reforms. The latter was intended to establish a more efficient system of land tenure conversion in Zambia. The article also examines the administration of conversion process of traditional/customary and State land. The article sets out on the premise that without effective tenure conversion policies in administering land, sustainable development in both traditional or customary and State areas will be hampered. To this effect, the issue of boundaries in customary or traditional communities will be discussed as a way of building territorial integrity and land management in customary land, through cadastral surveys that is apparent with the rise in population and demand for market-based activities in rural areas. The article will argue that without clearly defined systems of administration and demarcation of boundaries, between customary/traditional and State/formal lands in Zambia, this process will be prone to more land conflicts hindering socio-economic progress. Hence, the aim of the article is to investigate how the United Church of Zambia’s land has been administered and managed, considering the fact that most of its land is based both in customary/traditional areas that are controlled by the Chiefs and formal or State lands that are largely controlled by the government institutions. The methodology that will be used in or der to examine how the United Church of Zambia manages and administer its land will be qualitative methodology. The article will conclude that there is need for the United Church of Zambia to develop a land management policy that will assist the Church to manage and administer its lands that is both located in the traditional and government areas. Above all, the Church needs to ensure that leasehold conversion that is both customary and traditional authorities through the local Chiefs and the government through its Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, Commissioner of Lands, together with the Ministry of Local Government are legitimately acquired.

Volume of Institutional Credit and Land holding Size of Farmers in India

Abstract: Institutional credit is one important input for progressive agriculture. We expect efficient role of land to generate formal credit for the small farmers in the post tenancy reform period in India as secured land holding is ensured by such land reform policy. We have used NSSO 70th round unit level data on survey of agricultural households and quantile regression as a method to support the paper empirically. Volume of institutional credit is our dependent variable which is explained by land holding as well as different household level characteristics like caste, gender, religion and education. We found formal schooling, land and caste as significant factors to control the volume of formal credit but at different extent for different quantile ranges of the formal credit in India. Up to fiftieth quantile of institutional credit, land is more helpful to those who borrow more. But one unit of land is rather less helpful in generating higher volumes of credit in the quantile ranges above the median level. We conclude redistribution of land is essential to increase financial inclusion in India.