IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jageco/v60y2009i2p402-418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Heterogeneous Risk Preferences, Discount Rates and Land Contract Choice in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Mintewab Bezabih

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of risk and rate of time preference in the choice of land contracts. The analysis builds on the risk‐sharing and imperfect market explanations of contract choice. Unique data from Ethiopia, which contain land contract information and experimental risk and rate of time preference measures on matched landlord–tenant partners, are employed in the empirical analysis. The results show that landlord and tenant time preferences are significant determinants of contract choice. For landlords (but not tenants), risk preference is also significant, indicating the importance of financial constraints and production risk in the determination of contract choice. The results are of particular relevance to land market policy in Ethiopia, where production is risk‐prone, financial markets are imperfect, and where there is a major need for the development of vibrant land rental markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Mintewab Bezabih, 2009. "Heterogeneous Risk Preferences, Discount Rates and Land Contract Choice in Ethiopia," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 402-418, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:60:y:2009:i:2:p:402-418
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2008.00194.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-9552.2008.00194.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1477-9552.2008.00194.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1974. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(2), pages 219-255.
    2. Douglas W. Allen & Dean Lueck, 1993. "Transaction Costs and the Design of Cropshare Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(1), pages 78-100, Spring.
    3. Dubois, Pierre, 2002. "Moral hazard, land fertility and sharecropping in a rural area of the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 35-64, June.
    4. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Maristella Botticini, 2002. "Endogenous Matching and the Empirical Determinants of Contract Form," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 564-591, June.
    5. Pender, John L., 1996. "Discount rates and credit markets: Theory and evidence from rural india," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 257-296, August.
    6. Allen, Douglas W & Lueck, Dean, 1999. "The Role of Risk in Contract Choice," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 704-736, October.
    7. Yesuf, Mahmud & Bluffstone, Randy, 2007. "Risk aversion in low income countries: Experimental evidence from Ethiopia," IFPRI discussion papers 715, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. Deininger, Klaus & Songqing Jin & Adenew, Berhanu & Gebre-Selassie, Samuel & Demeke, Mulat, 2003. "Market and non-market transfers of land in Ethiopia - implications for efficiency, equity, and non-farm development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2992, The World Bank.
    9. World Bank, 2005. "Ethiopia : Well-Being and Poverty in Ethiopia, The Role of Agriculture and Agency," World Bank Publications - Reports 8707, The World Bank Group.
    10. Aggarwal, Rimjhim M., 2007. "Role of risk sharing and transaction costs in contract choice: Theory and evidence from groundwater contracts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 475-496, July.
    11. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Mohamed Salah Matoussi, 1995. "Moral Hazard, Financial Constraints and Sharecropping in El Oulja," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(3), pages 381-399.
    12. Teklu, Tesfaye & Lemi, Adugna, 2004. "Factors affecting entry and intensity in informal rental land markets in Southern Ethiopian highlands," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 117-128, March.
    13. Bliss, C. J. & Stern, N. H., 1982. "Palanpur: The Economy of an Indian Village," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198284192.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gwendoline Promsopha, 2017. "Are free land arrangement really free? An exploration into land arrangements made by rural-urban migrants in the Northeast of Thailand," Working Papers hal-01565843, HAL.
    2. Gwendoline Promsopha, 2016. "Are free loans of land really free? An exploratory analysis of risk-coping motives in land arrangements in the Northeast of Thailand," Post-Print hal-01401878, HAL.
    3. Yihong Ding & Kelvin Balcombe & Elizabeth Robinson, 2021. "Time discounting and implications for Chinese farmer responses to an upward trend in precipitation," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(3), pages 916-930, September.
    4. Yueming Cao & Yunli Bai & Linxiu Zhang, 2022. "Plot Size, Adjacency, and Farmland Rental Contract Choice," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-21, April.
    5. Cao, Yueming & Bai, Yunli & Zhang, Linxiu, 2021. "Plot Size, Adjacency, and Farmland Rental Contract Choice," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315378, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Yashodha, Y., 2018. "Bargaining and Contract Choice: Evidence from Informal Groundwater Contracts," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 276035, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. Roland Olbrich & Martin F. Quaas & Andreas Haensler & Stefan Baumgaertner, 2011. "Risk preferences under heterogeneous environmental risk," Working Paper Series in Economics 208, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    8. Sant’Anna, Ana Claudia & Bergtold, Jason S. & Shanoyan, Aleksan & Caldas, Marcellus M. & Granco, Gabriel, 2022. "Biofuel feedstock contract attributes, substitutability and tradeoffs in sugarcane production for ethanol in the Brazilian Cerrado: A stated choice approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 665-679.
    9. Mohan, Sarah, 2020. "Risk aversion and certification: Evidence from the Nepali tea fields," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    10. Hurley, Terrance M., 2010. "A review of agricultural production risk in the developing world," Working Papers 188476, HarvestChoice.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierre-André Chiappori & Bernard Salanié, 2002. "Testing Contract Theory : A Survey of Some Recent Work," Working Papers 2002-11, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    2. Fukunaga, Keita & Hueth, Brent, 2006. "Contractual Externalities and Contract Design -Evidence from Farmland Lease Contracts in U.S. Agriculture," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21368, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. Raul V. Fabella, 2016. "Why Fixed Rent Contracts are Less Prevalent: Weak Third Party Enforcement and Endogenous Principal Type," UP School of Economics Discussion Papers 201606, University of the Philippines School of Economics.
    4. Jun Yeong Lee & Grant Durbahn & Peter F. Orazem & Wendong Zhang, 2023. "The roles of risk preferences, selection, and uncertain returns on land contracts," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(2), pages 220-233, March.
    5. Yashodha, Y., 2018. "Bargaining and Contract Choice: Evidence from Informal Groundwater Contracts," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 276035, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Pedro Mendi, 2005. "The Structure of Payments in Technology Transfer Contracts: Evidence from Spain," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(2), pages 403-429, June.
    7. Oriana Bandiera, 1999. "On the Structure of Tenancy contracts: Theory and Evidence fron 19th Century Rural Sicily," STICERD - Development Economics Papers - From 2008 this series has been superseded by Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers 19, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    8. Luis H. B. Braido, 2008. "Evidence on the Incentive Properties of Share Contracts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(2), pages 327-349, May.
    9. Qiu, Feng & Goodwin, Barry K. & Gervais, Jean-Philippe, 2011. "An Empirical Investigation of the Linkages between Government Payments and Farmland Leasing Arrangements," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1-16.
    10. Sen, Debapriya, 2011. "A theory of sharecropping: The role of price behavior and imperfect competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 181-199.
    11. Mohamed Salah Matoussi & Neji Saidi, 2014. "Financial Constraints Risk Aversion and Sharecropping in Rainfed Agriculture: Application to North West Tunisia," Working Papers 880, Economic Research Forum, revised Nov 2014.
    12. Gebrehiwot, D. & Holden, S.T., 2018. "Variation in output shares and endogenous matching in land rental contracts," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277362, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    13. Riekhof, Marie-Catherine, 2019. "The insurance premium in the interest rates of interlinked loans in a small-scale fishery," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 87-112, February.
    14. Dubois, Pierre, 2002. "Moral hazard, land fertility and sharecropping in a rural area of the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 35-64, June.
    15. Ackerberg, Daniel A. & Botticini, Maristella, 2000. "The Choice of Agrarian Contracts in Early Renaissance Tuscany: Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard, or Capital Market Imperfections?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 241-257, July.
    16. Sharmina Ahmed & Christopher Findlay, 2012. "Participation and Contract Choice in the Tenancy Market," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2012_04, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
    17. Burnett, Wesley & Szmurlo, Daniel & Callahan, Scott, 2022. "Land tenure and conservation adoption: An analysis of contracts and incentives," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322244, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Hensher, David A. & Ho, Chinh & Knowles, Louise, 2016. "Efficient contracting and incentive agreements between regulators and bus operators: The influence of risk preferences of contracting agents on contract choice," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 22-40.
    19. Beyene, Abebe D. & Bezabih, Mintewab & Gebreegziabher, Zenebe, 2012. "Contract Duration under Incomplete Land Ownership Rights: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ethiopia," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-09-efd, Resources for the Future.
    20. Luis H.B. Braido, 2005. "Risk and Insurance in Sharecropping," Risk and Insurance 0508002, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:60:y:2009:i:2:p:402-418. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-857X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.