Agricultural Extension and Imperfect Supervision in Contract Farming: Evidence from Madagascar

This article tests whether agricultural extension and imperfect supervision -- conflated here into the number of visits by a technical assistant -- increase productivity in a sample of contract farming arrangements between a processing �rm and small agricultural producers in Madagascar. Production functions are estimated which treat the number of visits by a technical assistant as an input and which exploit the variation in the number of visits between the contracted crops grown on a given plot by a speci�c grower, thereby accounting for district-, grower-, and plot-level unobserved heterogeneity. Results indicate that the elasticity of yield with respect to the number of visits lies between 1.3 and 1.7.Supervision, Extension, Contract Farming, Grower-Processor Contracts

The (Im)Possibility of Reverse Share Tenancy

Under the assumption that the landlord is risk-neutral and the tenant is risk-averse, sharecropping is second-best in that it trades off risk sharing and incentives. Many, however, have reported instances of reverse share tenancy, or sharecropping in which the landlord is considerably poorer than the tenant. This note shows that reverse share tenancy is impossible under the canonical Stiglitzian model of sharecropping but becomes possible if and only if (i) both the landlord and the tenant can be assumed risk-averse; or (ii) there exist significant transactions costs making sharecropping more desirable than either a wage or fixed rent contract.Sharecropping; Reverse Share Tenancy; Transactions Cost

An Ordered Tobit Model of Market Participation: Evidence from Kenya and Ethiopia

Do rural households in developing countries make market participation and volume decisions simultaneously or sequentially? This article develops a two-stage econometric model that allows testing between these two competing hypotheses regarding household-level market behavior. The first stage models the household's choice of whether to be a net buyer, autarkic, or a net seller in the market. The second stage models the quantity bought (sold) for net buyers (sellers) based on observable household characteristics. Using household data from Kenya and Ethiopia on livestock markets, we find evidence in favor of sequential decision-making, the welfare implications of which we discuss.Industrial Organization,

AN ASSET-RISK MODEL OF REVERSE TENANCY

Reverse tenancy, wherein poorer landlords rent out land to richer tenants on shares, is a common phenomenon. Yet, it does not fit existing theoretical models of sharecropping and has never before been modeled in the development microeconomics literature. We explain reverse tenancy contracts using an asset risk model that incorporates moral hazard. When choosing the terms of an agrarian contract, the landlord considers the impact of her choice on the probability that she will retain future rights to the rented land. Thus, this model captures the effect of tenure insecurity and property rights on agrarian contracts. The main testable implication of the theoretical model is that, as property rights become more secure, reverse tenancy tends to disappear.Risk and Uncertainty,

The Determinants of Music Piracy in a Sample of College Students

Why do some individuals pirate digital music while others pay for it? Using data on a sample of undergraduate students, we study the determinants of music piracy by looking at whether a respondent’s last song was obtained illegally or not. In doing so, we incorporate (i) the individual-specific transactions costs that constitute the effective price of illegal music; and (ii) individual willingness to pay (WTP) for digital music, which we elicit using a simple field experiment and which we use to control for the unobserved heterogeneity of preferences between respondents. Our empirical results indicate that a respondent’s subjective probability of facing a lawsuit and her degree of morality both have a negative impact on the likelihood that her last song was obtained illegally. These results are robust whether WTP is estimated parametrically or nonparametrically. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of our findings.Music Piracy, Transactions Costs, Subjective Expectations

The Structural Estimation of Principal-Agent Models by Least Squares: Evidence from Land Tenancy in Madagascar

We develop a method to structurally estimate principal-agent models by ordinary least squares (OLS). We set up a general principal-agent model which explicitly incorporates the wealth levels of each party and the opportunity cost to the agent of entering the contract. This yields an optimal contract that is linearized by way of an Nth order Taylor approximation. This in turn imposes N(3N-1)/2 restrictions on the parameters and yields an empirical test of the canonical principal-agent model. In the application, we consider the case where N = 2 and apply our method to a sample of land tenancy contracts in rural Madagascar. Empirical tests lead to consistent failure to reject the hypotheses derived from our structural model, which lends support to our structural method as well as to the canonical principal-agent model.Principal-Agent Models, Contract Theory, Structural Estimations, Risk and Uncertainty, C12, C13, D86, O12, Q12,

Rising food prices, food price volatility, and political unrest

Do food prices cause political unrest? Throughout history, riots appear to have frequently broken out as a consequence of high food prices. This paper studies the impact of food prices on political unrest using monthly data on food prices at the international level. Because food prices and political unrest are jointly determined, the incidence of natural disasters in a given month is used in an attempt to identify the causal relationship between food prices and political unrest. Empirical results indicate that between January 1990 and January 2011, food price increases have led to increased political unrest, whereas food price volatility has been associated with decreases in political unrest. These findings are consistent with those of the applied microeconomics literature on the welfare impacts of food prices.Food Prices, Price Volatility, Political Unrest, Food Riots

As You Sow, So Shall You Reap: The Welfare Impacts of Contract Farming

What is the impact of participation in commodity chains on producer welfare? Contract farming – wherein a processing firm delegates its production of agricultural commodities to growers – is often viewed as a means of increasing grower welfare in developing countries. Because the nonrandom participation of growers in contract farming has so far not been dealt with convincingly, whether participation in contract farming increases welfare is up for debate. This paper uses the results of a contingent valuation experiment to estimate willingness to pay to enter contract farming, which is then used to control for actual participation in contract farming. Using data from Madagascar, results indicate that contract farming entails a 12- to 18-percent increase in income; a 16-percent decrease in income volatility; a two-month decrease in the duration of the hungry season; and a 30-percent increase in the likelihood that a household receives a formal loan.Contract Farming, Welfare, Grower-Processor Contracts, Outgrower Schemes

Insecure Land Rights and Share Tenancy in Madagascar

While most studies looking at the consequences of tenurial insecurity on land markets in developing countries focus on the effects of tenurial insecurity on the investment behavior of landowners, this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and contract choice in land tenancy. Based on a distinct feature of the interaction between formal law and customary rights in Madagascar, this paper augments the canonical model of share tenancy by making the strength of the landlord’s property right increasing in the amount of risk she chooses to bear within the contract. Sharecropping may thus emerge as the optimal contract even when the tenant is risk-neutral. Using data on landlords’ subjective perceptions of tenurial insecurity in a rural area of Madagascar, empirical tests strongly support the hypothesis that insecure property rights drive contract choice while offering little support in favor of the canonical hypothesis that risk sharing considerations drive contract choice.Sharecropping, Property Rights, Tenurial Insecurity, Subjective Expectations

Household-Level Livestock Marketing Behavior Among Northern Kenyan and Southern Ethiopian Pastoralists

Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks triggering massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. On the surface, it appears puzzling that pastoralists do not make extensive use of livestock markets to offload animals when climatic shocks temporarily reduce the carrying capacity of local rangelands, and then use markets to restock their herds when local conditions recover. In recent years, donors and policy makers have begun to hypothesize that investments in livestock marketing systems might quickly pay for themselves through reduced demand for relief aid,by increasing pastoralist marketing responsiveness to temporal variation in range conditions.Marketing,