how do payments for environmental services affect land tenure theory and evidence from china we gratefully acknowledge the financial support from renmin university for the research on land market development in the forest tenure reform project no 11xnc002 the british academy reference sg121920 the cambridge humanities research grants scheme and the economy and environment program for southeast asia reference pco13 0308 009

resource degradation and adoption of land conservation technologies in the ethiopian highlands a case study in andit tid north shewa abstract this paper reports results from a study of resource degradation and conservation behavior of peasant households in a degraded part of the ethiopian highlands peasant households choice of conservation technologies is modeled as a two stage process recognition of the erosion problem and adoption and level of use of control practices an ordinal logit model is used to explain parcel level perception of the threat of the erosion problem and the extent of use of conservation practices results show the importance of perception of the threat of soil erosion household land and farm characteristics perception of technology specific attributes and land quality differentials in shaping conservation decisions of peasants furthermore where poverty is widespread and appropriate support policies are lacking results indicate that population pressure per se is unable to encourage sustainable land use the challenge of breaking the poverty environment trap and initiating sustainable intensification thus require policy incentives and technologies that confer short term benefits to the poor while conserving the resource base

tenure land rights and farmer investment incentives in china the goal of this paper is to understand the nature of the property rights associated with china s land tenure systems and to study the impact of these property rights on agricultural production efficiency the results show that land tenure and associated property rights in rural china affect the production behavior of farmers the most robust finding is that the right to use land for long periods of time encourages the use of land saving investments while the results show that land tenure affects agricultural production decisions the difference between collective and private plots however is small compared to the private plotcommunal productivity gap that existed in the pre reform period 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

land degradation drought and food security in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model with market imperfections abstract this paper presents a bio economic model of andit tid a severely degraded crop livestock farming system with high population density and good market access in the highlands of ethiopia land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought threaten food security in the area drought or weather risk appears to have increased in recent years the bio economic model is used to analyse the combined effects of land degradation population growth market imperfections and increased risk of drought on household production welfare and food security we find that the indirect effects of drought on household welfare through the impact on crop and livestock prices are larger than the direct production effects of drought provision and adoption of credit for fertiliser although risky in itself may lead to increased grain production and improved household welfare and food security provision of credit may have a negative effect on conservation incentives but this effect may be mitigated by linking a conservation requirement to the provision of credit for fertiliser

non farm income household welfare and sustainable land management in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model has been calibrated to the socio economic and biophysical characteristics of a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought necessitates development of non farm employment opportunities in the area the model has been used to assess the impact of improved access to non farm income on household welfare agricultural production conservation investments and land degradation in the form of soil erosion the model simulations indicate that access to low wage off farm income is restricted by lack of employment opportunities since households otherwise would have engaged in more off farm wage employment than observed the simulations show that better unconstrained access to low wage non farm income has a substantial positive effect on household income total agricultural production crop and livestock production and farm inputs used are reduced when access to non farm employment is improved and thus increases the need to import food to the area access to non farm income reduces farm households incentives to invest in conservation and this leads to more overall soil erosion and more rapid land degradation even though intensity of production is reduced special policies are therefore needed to ensure land conservation and to sustain local food production

tenure security and land related investment evidence from ethiopia the authors use a large data set from ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land related investment and its possible impact on productivity while they find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees this is not the case for terraces transfer rights are unambiguously investment enhancing the large productivity effect of terracing implies that even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security this may not be socially efficient in ethiopia government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity

on the measurement of risk aversion from experimental data attitudes towards risk are measured for households in northern zambia using an experimental gambling approach with real payoffs that at maximum were equal to 30 of average total annual income per capita the results of the experiment show decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing partial risk aversion determinants of risk aversion are investigated using random effects interval regression model exploiting the panel data structure of the repeated experiments wealth indicator variables are found to be significant and partial relative risk aversion decreases as wealth increases females are found to be more risk averse than males

marketed surplus under risk do peasants agree with sandmo using a newly defined notion of aversion to income risk the behavior of the marketed surplus producer under price risk is characterized unlike the familiar case first examined by sandmo output depends on both ordinal preferences for goods and on risk attitudes conditions are found that yield an output level under risk that is smaller than under certainty if these conditions do not hold both risk and risk aversion may have a positive effect on output implications for econometric studies of risk attitudes are considered and illustrated with an example finally we examine the effect of uncertainty on the peasant s long run equilibrium

land tenure security and investment does strength of land right really matter in rural burkina faso abstract the causal relationship between land tenure security and agricultural investment plays a crucial role in the process of rural development land property rights are key determinants for reducing poverty through agricultural productivity natural resource management and socio economic inequalities growing competition for land access increases the sensitivity in land socio economic stakes and related policies in developing countries this paper analyzes the impacts of land rights on land related investment in rural burkina faso we use rural representative panel data and appropriate methods the two stage conditional maximum likelihood approach is used for dealing with endogeneity while the generalized structural equation model allows us to control for random effects we show that stronger land rights increase land attached investment and land investment has positive and negative effect on stronger and weaker land rights respectively in rural burkina faso our study also finds that women and immigrants have less land rights than men and natives respectively our contribution to related literature includes the use of rigorous process of hierarchy in land rights the close link of the results with land right strength is of great interest for cautious practitioners in land tenure and investment moreover our results imply that a gain of efficiency can be achieved from combining practices in land tenure and investment

the formal divide customary rights and the allocation of credit to agriculture in tanzania abstractit is generally held that one mechanism to enable inclusive growth in tanzania is enabling farmers to access credit to raise productivity and incomes the formalisation of property rights in tanzania is being undertaken by a multiplicity of actors at great expense to donors individuals and the government while there have been a variety of different justifications for allocating certificates of customary rights of occupancy ccros to farmers in tanzania perhaps the most prominent argument is that it will enable farmers to finally overcome the divide between informal customary rights and the formal banking sector ccros would provide the collateral that would induce banks to lend money to small scale farmers as part of a six year investigation in manyara mbeya and dodoma regions our research team evaluated the impact of formalisation on farmers access to credit the paper will present the results while pointing to the continuing institutional and market imperfections that perpetuate the fo

land tenure arrangements and rural urban migration in china summary obstacles to internal migration in china contribute to inefficiency inequality and land degradation academic and policy debate has primarily focused on discrimination against rural migrants on arrival in urban areas meanwhile barriers to migration out of rural areas have received less attention this paper examines the role of incomplete rural property rights in the migration decisions of rural households we examine the relationship between tenure insecurity and restrictions on land rentals and participation in outside labor markets the results indicate that tenure insecurity reduces migration this relationship is particularly pronounced on forest land which has implications for the conservation of recently replanted forest areas

the economic effects of land registration on smallholder farms in kenya evidence from nyeri and kakamega districts effects of land registration and title on security of tenure use of formal credit crop yields and land concentration are analyzed from household and plot data in four kenyan sites results indicate that the registration and titling program had a weak impact on perceived land rights of farmers credit use and terms crop yields or concentration of land holdings the conclusion is that titles are acquired for enhancing security of rights rather than for increasing agricultural production scarce government resources are best targeted towards providing better infrastructure and market opportunities which should also foster a greater demand for titling

does smallholder land titling facilitate agricultural growth an analysis of the determinants and effects of smallholder land titling in zambia summary zambia s land policies privilege agricultural land alienation by wage earners over local smallholder farmers as a result land title holders are not statistically significantly different from non title holders in terms of agricultural productivity despite greater access to investment capital from wage earnings and higher levels of education the effects of land titling on long and medium term land investments are also limited these results are indicative of widespread speculative alienation of agricultural land by wage earners enabling more productive land users to acquire title requires policy change aimed at lowering the transaction costs and bureaucratic complexity of acquiring land title

l etranger status property rights and investment incentives in cote d ivoire this study uses data from cote d ivoire to show that outsider households have relatively small land holdings and less complete rights over land than locals it then demonstrates a link between property rights and investment incentives by looking at the decision to leave land fallow outsiders fallow a smaller proportion of their land indicating that their farms are left uncultivated for shorter periods this is only partly explained by their incomplete property rights and relative land poverty these differences in investment patterns lead to lower yields per hectare jel o12 q15

the dynamic in stability of backwards induction abstract the evolutionary basis for predicting the backwards induction solution in finite extensive form games with perfect information is examined evolution is modelled using the replicator dynamic in combination with rare perturbations that introduce a small change in the proportion of each strategy the criterion for our judgement is whether this dynamic stabilizes over time at the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome we find that the backwards induction solution is fully justified by this process only in very simple games examples of more complex games are given in which this process does not select between the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome and alternative nash equilibrium outcomes journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c79

adjustment dynamics and rational play in games when a given strategic situation arises repeatedly the possibility arises that equilibrium predictions can be justified by a dynamic adjustment process we examine myopic adjustment dynamics a class that includes replicator dynamics from evolutionary game theory simple models of imitation models of experimentation and adjustment and some simple learning dynamics we present a series of theorems showing conditions under which behavior that is asymptotically stable under some such dynamic is strategically stable in the sense of kohlberg and mertens this behavior is thus as if the agents in the economy satisfied the extremely stringent assumptions that game theory traditionally makes about rationality and beliefs journal of economic literature classification number c72

nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural africa concepts dynamics and policy implications abstract asset activity and income diversification lie at the heart of livelihood strategies in rural africa this paper introduces a special issue on the topic income diversification and livelihoods in rural africa cause and consequence of change we concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversification and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue

do overlapping property rights reduce agricultural investment evidence from uganda the need for land related investment to ensure sustainable land management and increase productivity of land use is widely recognized however there is little rigorous evidence on the effects of property rights for increasing agricultural productivity and contributing toward poverty reduction in africa whether and by how much overlapping property rights reduce investment incentives and the scope for policies to counter such disincentives are thus important policy issues using information on parcels under ownership and usufruct by the same household from a nationally representative survey in uganda the authors find significant disincentives associated with overlapping property rights on short and long term investments the paper combines this result with information on crop productivity to obtain a rough estimate of the magnitudes involved the authors make suggestions on ways to eliminate such inefficiencies

partial land rights and agricultural outcomes evidence from thailand to disentangle the issue concerning which dimensions of land rights among security tradability and pledgeability affect agricultural outcomes this paper exploits a unique partial land rights entitlement program in thailand that guarantees only security allows a limited access to credit and prohibits any land sale based on an instrumental variables strategy i find that the entitlement increases 1 second rice but not major rice productivity 2 land use intensity and 3 land related investment and leads to 4 better soil quality this suggests that the security dimension alone can play an important role in improving farm activities

evolutionary dynamics and backward induction the backward induction or subgame perfect equilibrium of a perfect information game is shown to be the unique evolutionarily stable outcome for dynamic models consisting of selection and mutation when the mutation rate is low and the populations are large

tenure security private time preference and use of natural resources among lowland bolivian amerindians abstract to estimate the effect of tenure security and private time preference on the use of different types of natural resources such as old growth and fallow forests fish and game we did a survey and a psychological experiment with 443 households in 42 villages of yuracare mojeno tsimane and chiquitano indians in the bolivian lowlands results of multivariate tobit regressions suggest that 1 among the yuracare tsimane and mojeno rates of private time preference had a small economic and statistical effect on the use of natural resources and 2 tenure security proxied by residence duration in the village and by conflict with abutters only affected the consumption of wildlife principally of game results suggest that public policies to improve property rights over natural resources among indigenous people might have greater immediate impact on the conservation of wildlife than on the conservation of forest cover

tenure insecurity gender low cost land certification and land rental market participation in ethiopia abstract there is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in africa this paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in ethiopia in the late 1990s four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern ethiopia are analysed showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of potential tenant and landlord households especially those that are headed by females

access to capital and its impact on agrarian structure and productivity in kenya access to capital and its distribution across agents can profoundly shape the structure and performance of an agrarian market economy it is conceptually useful to distinguish between ex ante and ex post capital access ex ante capital access denotes the ability of agents to finance production costs e g labor and purchased inputs costs which must be paid ex ante that is prior to the actual realization of production ex post capital access that is access to capital after the realization of the production process is of particular importance as an insurance substitute in low income agrarian economies where contingency markets are imperfect buoyant ex post capital access would permit an individual to stabilize consumption year to year even as production fluctuates annually a number of theoretical models have ex

factors affecting entry and intensity in informal rental land markets in southern ethiopian highlands abstract informal land transactions particularly rental land markets are emerging in rural ethiopia in response to the inadequacies of the administratively based land distribution system to meet the growing demand for land and correct imbalances in factor proportions at the farm level these informal land markets provide a vehicle to equalise factor proportions at the farm level and to improve productivity and hence households welfare among the farmers who lease out land those who live in the highland areas where land is scarce and unequal are more likely to engage in these markets increases in the size of land holdings relative to labour and livestock ownership the number of non working household members and pressure for subsistence increase the likelihood of leasing out land on the other hand increases in the number of working adults improved nutritional status and greater wealth affect negatively the supply of land into these markets the potential exists for these markets to improve factor equalisation reduce inequality in land holdings and shift the income position of participating households however success depends on whether other factor markets are functioning to thwart forced disposal of land to meet subsistence public policy has pivotal role in fostering the growth of these markets and their land transfer and factor equalisation functions by ensuring their legally enforceable status and removing legal restrictions that constrain choices of contracts and trading over greater distances in addition both long and short term policy measures are needed to reduce the extent to which poor farmers engage in distress transactions

the dynamics of livelihood diversification in post famine ethiopia abstract based on data for almost 300 households this paper explores associations among income diversification household perceptions of livelihood risks and changes in consumption outcomes across two points in time in post famine ethiopia four key questions are addressed i to what extent did households emerging from the famine period with relatively higher income and calorie consumption levels also have a more diversified income base ii was higher income diversification in 1989 associated with higher income and consumption levels by 1994 iii which households increased their share of income from non cropping activities most during the inter survey years and iv did household heads perceive a lack of non farm income activities to be an important risk factor in famine vulnerability we find that wealthier households tended to have more diversified income streams those initially more diversified subsequently experienced a relatively greater increase in both income and calorie intake households with a greater concentration of assets were more likely to fall in their relative outcome ranking as were female headed households and initially less diversified households subsequently realized greater gains in income diversification we also find suggestive evidence that personal perceptions of risk factors guided subsequent diversification decisions

cash crop production food price volatility and rural market integration in the third world large farmers in the third world often devote to cash crops a larger share of their land than do small farmers this paper suggests a possible explanation even in the presence of food markets third world farmers food security is best assured by food self sufficiency a model of crop portfolio choice under multivariate risk is used to show that reasonable assumptions regarding risk and preferences reproduce the observed pattern simulations further indicate that food market integration reduces the need for food self sufficiency policy implications are drawn regarding domestic trade liberalization and agricultural technology

an economic analysis of interest rate swaps interest rate swaps a financial innovation in recent years are based upon the principle of comparative advantage an interest rate swap is a useful tool for active liability management and for hedging against interest rate risk the purpose of this paper is to provide a simple economic analysis of interest rate swaps alternative uses of and the appropriate valuation procedure for interest rate swaps are described the significant increase in both the levels and the volatilities of market interest rates since the late 70 s has resulted in substantially higher interest rate risks faced by business firms and financial institutions the problem and consequences of interest rate risk exposure are particularly serious for firms in which the duration of assets does not match the duration of the liabilities for instance most financial institutions and many corporations financed long term fixed rate assets with short term floating rate liabilities such firms lose when the shortterm interest rates in the market rise unexpectedly because for given fixed rates of return on their assets the short term interest costs that they have to pay rise with the market interest rates conversely these firms gain from an unexpected decline in short term market interest rates in recent years the introduction and the development of new financial products in the capital markets such as interest rate futures interest rate options and interest rate swaps represent logical responses to the increased need to reduce firms exposure to interest rate risk

the distributive impact of land markets in uganda abstract this article presents first hand evidence about land distribution and the impact of land markets in central uganda this area is characterized by unequal distribution of land inheritance rural rural migration and active land markets we show that land markets and particularly land purchases tend to reduce the initial inequality in the initial inherited distribution of land land purchases by landless farmers in their native village represent an important part of this adjustment

indigenous land rights in sub saharan africa appropriation security and investment demand abstract we discuss the links between rights appropriation tenure security and investment demand in sub saharan africa common assertions regarding indigenous tenure are 1 a insecurity of tenure leads to suboptimal investment incentives and 2 b appropriation of land rights in the public domain is rent dissipating we argue that land use and investment decisions among african farmers often have two motives productivity and rights appropriation the usual assertions thus seem contradictory we offer a conceptual model to show that indigenous tenure may provide equal or higher investment incentives than private rights and may promote modes of rights appropriation that are productive rather than wasteful

distress rentals and the land rental market as a safety net contract choice evidence from tigray ethiopia rural households in the semiarid northern ethiopian highlands are net buyers of food crop failure due to erratic and unpredictable rainfall occurs frequently and leads to food shortages and income shocks the renting out of land may be one of the coping responses of households exposed to shocks we developed a theoretical household model for poor landlord households capturing their contract choice response to downside production shocks we tested econometrically whether contract choice may depend on poverty capital constraints production risk and random shocks the multinomial logit model estimates show that poor households experiencing random shocks are more likely to choose fixed rent contracts as a distress response to shocks suggesting that fixed rent contracts may be used to meet immediate needs but at the expense of future incomes we also found that fixed rent contracts are preferred when ex ante production risk is low while sharecropping is more likely where production risk is high finally we found an indication that the choice of a fixed rent contract as a coping response to shocks comes as a last resort after all other means of coping are exhausted

credit rationing concessionary lending and debt maturity abstract a firm raises capital for a two period investment while creditors observe the project status midstream unobservable managerial perks may consume capital each period when the firm is unfortunate early on short term financing results in either concessionary lending or costly liquidation rolling over short term debt may be problematic because the high risk premium creditors demand when asset value is low relative to debt impares managerial motivation precisely when the incentive to defer perk consumption is weakest long term financing may reduce total agency costs be enabling lenders to charge higher initial premia in effect shifting loan repayments to states in which incentive constraints are non binding

tenure security investment and productivity in gambian agriculture a generalized probit analysis the determinants of investment input use and productivity are investigated under customary tenure in peri urban areas of the gambia a structural model is specified to investigate the role of tenure security on farm investments and input use and thereby on yield testing of the structural form hypotheses requires simultaneous equation estimation containing both continuous and discrete endogenous variables the model is estimated as a feasible generalized least squares amemiya s generalized probit some of the positive relationships hypothesized between tenure security investment and yields are corroborated in particular tenure security is found to enhance long term investments which in turn enhance yields

property rights productivity and common property resources insights from rural cambodia summary this paper uses data from the 2003 04 cambodia household socioeconomic survey to investigate the effects of property rights to land plots held with a paper documenting ownership in rural cambodia are found to have higher productivity and land values than other plots while property rights have weak effects on access to credit the paper also investigates whether the introduction of private property rights leads to decreased availability of common property resources the data offers only weak support for this hypothesis the general insight is that policies to strengthen land property rights can have important positive effects on the rural economy even in an environment of low state capacity

do people play nash equilibrium lessons from evolutionary game theory evolutionary game theory provides an answer to two of the central questions in economic modeling when is it reasonable to assume that people are rational and when is it reasonable to assume that behavior is part of a nash equilibrium and if it is reasonable which equilibrium the traditional answers are not compelling and much of evolutionary modeling is motivated by the need for a better answer evolutionary game theory suggests that in a range of settings agents do eventually play a nash equilibrium moreover evolutionary modeling has shed light on the relative plausibility of different nash equilibria

how does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity this study uses household level panel data on smallholder farmers in ethiopia to estimate how rural population density rpd affects agricultural intensification and productivity our results suggest that higher rpd is associated with smaller farm sizes and has a positive effect on input demand represented by increased fertilizer use per hectare overall increased input use does not lead to a corresponding increase in staple crop yields and thus farm income declines as population density increases this suggests a situation where farmers in areas of high rpd may be stuck in place unable to sustainably intensify in the face of rising rpd and declining farm sizes 2014 elsevier ltd

review the economics of soil health abstract soil health plays an important role in agricultural productivity food quality environmental resiliency and ecosystem sustainability consequently there is great interest from policymakers for evidence based research on the benefits and costs of investing in healthy soils in this article i endeavor to build a common understanding between economists soil scientists and policymakers about how to pursue research on the economics of soil health first i summarize the current understanding of soil health as a holistic and multidimensional concept beyond that of mere soil fertility second i argue that optimal control models are particularly well suited to capture the underlying economics of soil management finally i outline relevant implications of such an approach for setting soil health policy

impacts of low cost land certification on investment and productivity new land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low cost propoor reforms are being tested in poor countries this article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low cost land certification implemented in the tigray region of ethiopia using a unique household and farm plot level panel data set with data from before and up to eight years after the reform alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity significant positive impacts were found including effects on the maintenance of soil conservation structures investment in trees and land productivity copyright 2007 oxford university press

can the west save africa in the new millennium the western aid effort toward africa has surged due to writ ings by well known economists a celebrity mass advocacy campaign and decisions by western leaders to make africa a major foreign policy priority this survey contrasts the predominant transformational approach west comprehensively saves africa to occasional swings to a marginal approach west takes one small step at a time to help individual africans evaluation of one step at a time initiatives is generally easier than that of transformational ones either through controlled experiments although these have been oversold or simple case studies where it is easier to attribute outcomes to actions we see two themes emerge from the literature survey 1 escalation as each successive western transformational effort has yielded disappointing results as judged at least by stylized facts since again the econometrics are shaky the response has been to try an even more ambitious effort and 2 the cycle of ideas rather than a progressive testing and discarding of failed ideas we see a cycle in aid ideas in many areas in africa with ideas going out of fashion only to come back again later after some lapse long enough to forget the previous disappointing experience both escalation and cyclicality of ideas are symptomatic of the lack of learning that seems to be characteristic of the transfor mational approach in contrast the marginal approach has had some successes in improving the well being of individual africans such as the dramatic fall in mortality

does land titling improve credit access quasi experimental evidence from rural china based on official surveys conducted in 2010 and 2015 we study how the chinese land titling reform beginning in 2009 affected rural households access to credit we find that the reform had differe

resource degradation low agricultural productivity and poverty in sub saharan africa pathways out of the spiral sub saharan africa ssa has the lowest agricultural productivity in the world while almost half of the population lives below us 1 per day the biggest development policy challenge is to find appropriate solutions to end hunger and poverty in the region building on several years of empirical research conducted in east africa this paper identifies potential strategies for sustainable development in this region in general the empirical evidence reviewed confirms that different strategies are needed in different development domains of ssa nevertheless some elements will be common to all successful strategies including assurance of peace and security a stable macroeconomic environment provision of incentives through markets where markets function development of market institutions where they do not and public and private investment in an appropriate mix of physical human natural and social capital the differences in strategies across these domains mainly reflect differences in the mix of those investments as influenced by different comparative advantages

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

is land titling in sub saharan africa cost effective evidence from madagascar formalizing land rights has been promoted as a way to encourage agricultural investment and stimulate land markets yet little is known about the benefits of such policies in sub saharan africa where the preconditions for success are less favorable the analysis uses a large sample of plots from an intensively titled rice growing area of madagascar and compares land specific investments land productivity and land values for titled and untitled plots cultivated by the same household having a title has no significant effect on plot specific investment and correspondingly little effect on land productivity and land values these results are broadly consistent with a simulation of a theoretical model of investment under expropriation risk calibrated to the same data a cost benefit analysis suggests that the current system of formal titling should not be extended in rural madagascar and that any new system of land registration will have to be quite inexpensive to be worthwhile

cycles of learning in the centipede game abstract this paper studies the evolutionary properties of the centipede game for this game the use of backward induction as a model of rational behavior has been consistently challenged by the experimental evidence our claim is that backward induction can still accurately predict the players behavior provided that they are given time enough to appreciate the strategic environment in which they operate we support this claim by proving convergence to the backward induction solution for all continuous time monotonic selection dynamics however we also show that this solution is intrinsically unstable and how this instability is positively related to the length of the game journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c79

interest rate swaps in an agency theoretic model with uncertain interest rates abstract this paper reconciles market participants claims that interest rate swap financing may reduce financing costs through comparative advantage with academic arguments questioning the existence of comparative advantage the findings suggest that the combination of short term debt and interest rate swap may reduce financing costs by allowing high risk firms to reduce agency costs without incurring interest rate risk

evolutionary drift and equilibrium selection this paper develops an approach to equilibrium selection in game theory based on studying the learning process through which equilibrium is achieved the differential equations derived from models of interactive learning typically have stationary states that are not isolated instead nash equilibria that specify different out of equilibrium behaviour appear in connected components of stationary states the stability properties of these components can depend critically on the perturbations to which the system is subjected we argue that it is then important to incorporate such drift into the model a sufficient condition is provided for drift to create stationary states with strong stability properties near a component of equilibria applications to questions of forward and backward induction are developed

an empirical test of agency cost reduction using interest rate swaps abstract this paper tests a model based on wall s wall l 1989 journal of banking and finance 13 261 270 hypothesis of agency cost reduction using interest rate swaps we find a significant positive relationship between the risk of the firm and the reduction of agency costs measured by the continuously compounded excess return car of the firm our findings are consistent with wall s hypothesis and other theories of swap transactions and in explaining the existence and growth of the swap market

how can african agriculture adapt to climate change a counterfactual analysis from ethiopia we analyze the impact of different adaptation strategies on crop net revenues in the nile basin of ethiopia we estimate a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of climate change adaptation and crop net revenues and implement a counterfactual analysis households data are combined with spatial climate data we find that adaptation to climate change based upon a portfolio of strategies significantly increases farm net revenues changing crop varieties has a positive and significant impact on net revenues when coupled with water conservation strategies or soil conservation strategies but not when implemented in isolation jel q54 q56

wealth risk and activity choice cattle in western tanzania abstract imperfect credit markets force households to use their savings for investment profitable activities often require lumpy investments limiting entry by poorer households resulting in increasing welfare differences in tanzania cattle are a profitable but lumpy investment and a liquid asset for consumption smoothing richer households own substantial cattle herds while poorer households specialize in low return low risk activities a dynamic programming model and simulations are presented to analyze entry into asset accumulation under income risk the evidence suggests that households with lower endowments are less likely to own cattle and returns to their endowments are lower

tenure security resource poverty public programs and household plot level conservation investments in the highlands of northern ethiopia land degradation poses a serious problem for the livelihoods of rural producers furthermore there is rarely enough private investment taking place to commensurate the scale of the problem this article examines the role of tenure insecurity resource poverty risk and time preferences and community led land conservation on differentiated patterns of household investment in land conservation in northern ethiopia we control for biophysical household characteristics market access conditions and village level factors investments in soil bunds and stone terraces are specifically studied so as to capture the link between these various factors and the durability of conservation investments we introduce the distinction between the determinants of the decision to invest and how much to invest in conservation regression results show that publicly led conservation programs seem to significantly stimulate private investment a host of plot level variables and household perceptions of returns on conservation investments expressed in terms of perceived improvements in land quality and increased crop yields were found to be critical to the decision to invest and intensify soil conservation the evidence on the significance of households attitudes toward risk aversion suggests the important role of risk and the household s risk bearing capacity in the decision to intensify conservation measures at the same time tenure security indicators and households resource endowments resource poverty had weaker effects in increasing willingness to invest and the level of investment made the policy implications of these results point to the importance of agricultural research and extension efforts that target technologies which reduce household risk and poverty while enabling sustainable investments in conservation measures by individual households

property rights and the role of the state evidence from the horn of africa this study applies extant theories of property rights change to three land tenure systems in imperial ethiopia two of the areas underwent changes in property rights after experiencing changes in the value of land one did not a data set of litigation over land rights is used in conjunction with case studies to understand the mechanisms motivating or impeding property rights change amendments to the role of the state are suggested and two conclusions are reached 1 that movement towards greater specificity of land rights did not always occur and 2 the changes in property rights that occurred were imposed from above rather than occurring endogenously where property rights changes did not occur they appear to have been blocked by the state which was more concerned with political survival than with revenue maximisation

allocation of land tenure rights in tigray how large is the gender bias this study investigates gender differences in land ownership and use in northern ethiopia female headed households have 23 smaller owned landholdings and 54 smaller operational landholdings household endowments of nonland productive inputs are important but decomposition analysis shows that differences in observable characteristics such as labor and oxen explain less than half of these differences whereas the remaining differences can be attributed to differences in returns to these characteristics the latter suggests a gender bias in land allocation the main policy recommendation is to strengthen women s opportunities to cultivate their land and continue the process of securing women s tenure rights

smallholder land access in post war northern mozambique summary this paper analyzes the inequality and determinants of flexibility in smallholder land access in post war northern mozambique this paper demonstrates that high land endowments in aggregate do not imply equal access to cultivated or fallow land at the household level even if land access has some flexibility across time a formal test establishes the low extent of flexibility in land access at the household level in the study site the econometric analysis further reveals that some groups of households such as female headed households and those with low asset endowments or weak social institutions suffer from significant rigidities in land access

games of perfect information predatory pricing and the chain store paradox the thesis of this paper is that finite noncooperative games possessing both complete and perfect information ought to be treated like one player decision problems that is players ought to assign at every move subjective probabilities to every subsequent choice in the game and ought to make decisions via backward induction this view is in contrast with the gametheoretic approach of nash equilibrium after expanding on this view for games in the abstract in sections 2 and 3 attention is turned in section 4 to an example due to reinhard selten called the chain store paradox which possesses the flavor of a situation involving a predatory pricing monopolist it is argued that for the chain store game the decision analytic approach leads under certain assumptions to more realistic outcomes than the standard nash equilibrium approach

investment in soil conservation in northern ethiopia the role of land tenure security and public programs abstract a double hurdle statistical analysis of 250 farms in the tigray region of ethiopia reveals different causal factors for soil conservation adoption versus intensity of use farmers reasons for adopting soil conservation measures vary sharply between stone terraces and soil bunds long term investments in stone terraces were associated with secure land tenure labour availability proximity to the farmstead and learning opportunities via the existence of local food for work ffw projects by contrast short term investments in soil bunds were strongly linked to insecure land tenure and the absence of local food for work projects public conservation campaigns on private plots reduced adoption of both stone terraces and soil bunds whereas capacity factors largely influenced the adoption decision expected returns carried more influence for the intensity of stone terrace adoption measured as metres of terrace per hectare more stone terracing was built where fertile but erodible silty soils in higher rainfall areas offered valuable yield benefits intensity of terracing was also greater in remote villages where limited off farm employment opportunities reduced construction costs these results highlight the importance of the right kind of public interventions direct public involvement in constructing soil conservation structures on private lands appears to undermine incentives for private conservation investments when done on public lands however public conservation activities may encourage private soil conservation by example secure land tenure rights clearly reinforce private incentives to make long term investments in soil conservation

property rights for the poor effects of land titling secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development the evaluation of the causal effects of property rights however is a difficult task as their allocation is typically endogenous to overcome this identification problem we exploit a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles in 1981 squatters occupied a piece of land in a poor suburban area of buenos aires in 1984 a law was passed expropriating the former owners land to entitle the occupants some original owners accepted the government compensation while others disputed the compensation payment in the slow argentine courts these different decisions by the former owners generated an exogenous allocation of property rights across squatters using data from two surveys performed in 2003 and 2007 we find that entitled families substantially increased housing investment reduced household size and enhanced the education of their children relative to the control group these effects however did not take place through improvements in access to credit our results suggest that land titling can be an important tool for poverty reduction albeit not through the shortcut of credit access but through the slow channel of increased physical and human capital investment which should help to reduce poverty in future generations

expected failures and unexpected successes of land titling in africa abstract the imposition of market oriented economic reforms throughout africa in the 1990s has sparked renewed debate over the desirability of state sponsored land titling programs proponents argue that land titling is an essential foundation for economic growth opponents contend that titling programs are unnecessary and premature at best or detrimental at worst this paper addresses these concerns through an examination of cameroon s 1974 lands ordinance using both quantitative and qualitative data we find that the 1974 lands ordinance has not introduced western style private property rights in cameroon s agrarian sector nevertheless the ordinance is not irrelevant to rural farmers rural farmers have used the ordinance to obtain concrete boundary markers on their land enhancing their tenure security in addition administrators have used the ordinance to register underdeveloped land reducing the contradictions between state law and customary law these findings suggest that policy makers could fruitfully redesign their land tenure policies to render them more attractive to rural farmers and thereby give the state a more constructive role in enhancing tenure security and in promoting economic growth

evolutionary stability with equilibrium entrants abstract the strategy that upsets a potential evolutionarily stable strategy may in itself be very unstable or may differ from the candidate strategy only in irrelevant ways this paper develops a solution concept addressing these difficulties we lood for a set of nash equilibria such that small groups of entrants whose members are satisfied with their entry cannot take the population out of the set such a set is robust to the iterated removal of weakly dominated strategies depends only on the reduced normal form and has the never a weak best response property for generic two person extensive form games such sets generate payoffs consistent with proper equilibria

evolutionary stability in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma game the dynamic evolutionary stability of mutual defection is proven for the repeated prisoner s dilemma game where payoffs are cumulative and the number of repetitions is known this agrees with the classical result that the only nash equilibrium outcome is to defect at all stages of this repeated game moreover it is shown that for any initial polymorphic population the evolutionary dynamic converges to a unique nash equilibrium strategy that depends on the original polymorphism both these results confirm earlier conjectures concerning the application of evolutionary game theory to the repeated prisoner s dilemma journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c70 c72

land tenure security and investment incentives puzzling evidence from burkina faso abstract the commonsense logic associating higher land security and higher incentives to invest has been recently called into question in the case of african agriculture to be meaningful empirical tests have to be carefully designed so as to take account of the possible endogeneity of the land rights variable this is done in this paper by applying suitable econometric methods to the original data collected in burkina faso the results obtained cast doubt on the existence of a systematic influence of land tenure security on investment by reviewing the justifications for scepticism in the recent literature we are able to conclude that the traditional village order where it exists provides the basic land rights required to stimulate small scale investment

some notes on how land title affects child labor secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development however evaluation of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task since 2004 a program called papel passado has issued titles to more than over 85 000 families and has the goal to reach 750 000 this paper examines the direct impact of securing a property title on child labor force participation this study uses a comparison between two close and similar communities in the city of osasco case the key point of this case is that some units participate in the program and others do not estimates generated using difference in difference econometric technique suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease in child labor force participation for the families that received the title compared with the others this findings are relevant for future policy tools for dealing with informality and how it affects economic growth

income portfolios in rural ethiopia and tanzania choices and constraints the article analyses the different income portfolios of households using survey data from rural ethiopia and rural tanzania it suggests that the different portfolios held by households cannot be e

land redistribution tenure insecurity and intensity of production a study of farm households in southern ethiopia this study analyzes the determinants of land tenure insecurity and its impact on intensity of use of purchased farm inputs among households in southern ethiopia seventeen percent of the households stated that they were tenure insecure the feeling of tenure insecurity could be caused by the land redistribution policy in ethiopia where household size has been the main criterion used for land allocation after the land reform in 1975 this would imply that land rich households should be more tenure insecure alternatively the local power structure may be strong enough to counter this and cause the land rich who are also likely to be influential to be able to protect their land rights the analysis revealed that in the overall sample relative farm size was not significantly correlated with tenure insecurity when testing for each site however we found that in four of the sites per capita farm size was positively associated with tenure insecurity while in five other sites it had a significant negative association this may be due to local historical cultural and demographic differences giving way to differences in the effects of the redistribution policy and the local power structure on tenure insecurity we assessed the impact of tenure insecurity on the intensity of use of purchased farm inputs the tenure insecurity variable was insignificant farmers in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity were more likely to purchase farm inputs larger farms were more likely to use purchased inputs but this effect was lower in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity poverty and subsistence constraints may explain this absence of higher intensity of use of purchased inputs on small farms by contrast the land redistribution policy may have improved small farms access to purchased farm inputs text of abstract

deposit insurance market discipline and off balance sheet banking risk of large u s commercial banks abstract the market discipline of off balance sheet banking activities obsas is examined by employing contingent claims valuation techniques to derive implied asset variances from bank equity and from risk premia for bank subordinated debt specifically implied asset variances have been calculated from market and on and off balance sheet information using options pricing techniques theoretically these implied asset variances are better than equity variance or risk premia in proxying bank risk because they capture portfolio effects as well as the non linear nature of contingent claims model and the impact of closure rules empirical results suggest the existence of market discipline of obsas market participants price these obsas as risk reducing

common belief and the theory of games with perfect information abstract the statement it is common belief that player i is bayesian rational where bayesian rational means an expected utility maximizer is defined for two person games with perfect information it is shown that in most such games it is not possible for a theory so postulate the bayesian rationality of all players and to be common belief this bears directly upon the salience of standard solution concepts such as subgame perfect and sequential equilibria as well as upon the extensive form rationalizability theories of d bernheim econometrica 52 1984 1009 1028 and d pearce econometrica 52 1984 1029 1050 which rely heavily on the common belief of bayesian rationality journal of economic literature classification number c72

land tenure and investment incentives evidence from west africa abstract the existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory i make two clarifying contributions to this literature first i pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts studies with small sample sizes those that use binary investment measures and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment self reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes second i test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from west africa while the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting it is less robust for labor use and other inputs such as manure or chemical fertilizer

land fragmentation and food insecurity in ethiopia this paper revisits the economic consequences of land fragmentation taking seriously concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation its measurement and the importance of considering impacts in terms of welfare metrics using data that are well suited to addressing these issues the analysis finds that land fragmentation reduces food insecurity this result is robust to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity concerns are addressed further the paper finds that land fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall on food security this is because households with diverse parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types

farm productivity in rwanda effects of farm size erosion and soil conservation investments this paper examines the effects of farm size soil erosion and soil conservation investments on land and labor productivity and allocative efficiency in rwanda there were several key results first there is a strong inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity and the opposite for labor productivity for smaller farms there is evidence of allocative inefficiency in use of land and labor probably due to factor market access constraints second farms with greater investment in soil conservation have much better land productivity than average those with very eroded soils do much worse than average smaller farms are not more eroded than larger farms but have twice the soil conservation investments third land productivity benefits substantially from perennial cash crops and the gains to shifting to cash crops are highest for those with low erosion and high use of fertilizer and organic matter program and policy effort to encourage and enable farmers to make soil conservation investments to use fertilizer and organic matter and to participate in cash cropping of perennials will have big payoffs in productivity land markets that allow smaller farmers to buy land could also increase aggregate productivity

property rights and productivity the case of joint land titling in vietnam this paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife using a plot fixed effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields for both individually and jointly held titles we conclude that there is no tradeoff between joint titling and productivity and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses

measuring the production efficiency of alternative land tenure contracts in a mixed crop livestock system in ethiopia abstract in this paper we test the hypothesis that land held under varying configurations of property rights will be farmed at different levels of production efficiency production data were collected from 477 plots in a fairly productive mixed farming system in the ethiopian highlands interspatial measures of total factor productivity based on the divisia index were used to measure the relative production efficiency of three informal and less secure land contracts rented share cropped and borrowed relative to lands held under formal contract with the ethiopian government although the informally contracted lands are farmed 10 16 less efficiently the analysis indicates that farmers of such lands actually apply inputs more rather than less intensively i e more inputs per unit of land the gap in total factor productivity thus results from the inferior quality of inputs or lack of skills in applying them rather than a lack of incentive to allocate inputs to mixed crop livestock farming for this reason we find no empirical basis to support the hypothesis that land tenure is a constraint to agricultural productivity

tenure security resource endowments and tree growing evidence from the amhara region of ethiopia we analyze roles of tenure insecurity and household endowments in explaining tree growing in ethiopia where farmers cannot sell or mortgage land and factor markets are imperfect unlike most other studies we use panel data and examine determinants of the decision and intensity of tree growing unlike other studies we compare the decision to keep trees and the decision to plant in the recent past the results suggest that land tenure insecurity influences the decision to grow trees but not the number of trees households grow household endowments time and location also explain tree growing by farmers

determinants of food security in southern ethiopia at the household level in the early 1980s a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security following amartya sens 1981 claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern affecting the poor s access to food than a supply concern affecting availability of food at the national level despite the wide acceptance of sen s thinking many controversies including the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles this study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following singh et al 1986 and parses out the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in determining household food security in southern ethiopia based on results of a test of full reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security we conclude that the supply side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand side variables

rural market imperfections and the farm size productivity relationship evidence from pakistan the subject of this article is the relationships between farm size and productivity and between farm size and profitability in the developing countries the recent controversies over the inverse size output relationship are reviewed and a framework is provided that explains the inverse relationship based on plausible assumptions about imperfections in the markets for labor land credit and risk from this framework a set of testable hypotheses are derived the hypotheses are tested on recent farm level panel data from pakistan a strong inverse relationship between farm size and yield is present in the sample even when household fixed effects are used to account for unobserved heterogeneity moreover the suggested market imperfections framework is consistent with the data

institutions top down or bottom up a large research program in economics has established a persuasive link between institutions and economic development but what does this imply for development policymaking can a political leader or aid agency seeking to promote development readily change institutions this article starts off wildly general and then moves to specifics

the relation between farm size and farm productivity the role of family labor supervision and credit constraints abstract the paper shows that if the performance of hired farmhands is affected by supervision from family members and if the availability of credit is dependent on the amount of land owned then a systematic positive or negative relationship between per acre yields and farm size will prevail a model with no supervision effects on labor productivity would predict that yields are unaffected by farm size the paper also investigates the relation between land utilization and owned holding size when land rental possibilities are limited results are shown to be compatible with various observed patterns in ldcs