IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v28y2019i2p147-175..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Land Tenure Insecurity as an Investment Incentive: The Case of Migrant Cocoa Farmers and Settlers in Ivory Coast

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Bros
  • Alain Desdoigts
  • Hugues Kouadio

Abstract

This study sets forth a positive relationship between tenure insecurity and investment over different time horizons among cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast. This positive relationship stands in stark contrast to results found in many related studies. We argue that this difference stems from the types of crops considered and depends, in particular, on whether one considers annual and/or perennial crops. Given that cultivating perennial crops such as cocoa requires large upfront investments over a long period of time, retaining control over land in the long run is essential, especially when the trees reach full maturity. According to some theoretical arguments, investing is a way of retaining such control when the farmer does not have administrative rights. Our results show that cocoa farmers whose status remains precarious in terms of tenure security (migrants) have a higher propensity to invest, especially when the tree is about to yield substantially. This study thus underlines the need to account for the life cycle of crops and the associated revenue streams when assessing the relationship between tenure (in-)security and investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Bros & Alain Desdoigts & Hugues Kouadio, 2019. "Land Tenure Insecurity as an Investment Incentive: The Case of Migrant Cocoa Farmers and Settlers in Ivory Coast," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 28(2), pages 147-175.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:28:y:2019:i:2:p:147-175.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejy019
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fenske, James, 2011. "Land tenure and investment incentives: Evidence from West Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 137-156, July.
    2. Edella Schlager & Elinor Ostrom, 1992. "Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 68(3), pages 249-262.
    3. Aryeetey, Ernest & Devarajan, Shantayanan & Kanbur, Ravi & Kasekende, Louis (ed.), 2012. "The Oxford Companion to the Economics of Africa," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199575978.
    4. James Fenske, 2010. "L’Étranger: Status, Property Rights, and Investment Incentives in Côte d’Ivoire," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 86(4), pages 621-644.
    5. Banerjee, Abhijit V. & Ghatak, Maitreesh, 2004. "Eviction threats and investment incentives," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 469-488, August.
    6. Place, Frank, 2009. "Land Tenure and Agricultural Productivity in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of the Economics Literature and Recent Policy Strategies and Reforms," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1326-1336, August.
    7. Brasselle, Anne-Sophie & Gaspart, Frederic & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 2002. "Land tenure security and investment incentives: puzzling evidence from Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 373-418, April.
    8. Abdulai, Awudu & Owusu, Victor & Goetz, Renan, 2011. "Land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures: Theoretical and empirical analyses," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 66-78, September.
    9. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-338, May.
    10. F. Place & K. Otsuka, 2002. "Land Tenure Systems and Their Impacts on Agricultural Investments and Productivity in Uganda," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(6), pages 105-128.
    11. Besley, Timothy, 1995. "Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and Evidence from Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 903-937, October.
    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. Deininger, Klaus & Xia, Fang & Kilic, Talip & Moylan, Heather, 2021. "Investment impacts of gendered land rights in customary tenure systems: Substantive and methodological insights from Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    2. Francesco Cordaro & Alain Desdoigts, 2021. "Bounded Rationality, Social Capital and Technology Adoption in Family Farming: Evidence from Cocoa-Tree Crops in Ivory Coast," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-20, July.
    3. Hoang Huu Dinh & Shyam Basnet & Justus Wesseler, 2023. "Impact of Land Tenure Security Perception on Tree Planting Investment in Vietnam," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-23, February.
    4. Deininger,Klaus W. & Ali,Daniel Ayalew, 2022. "How Urban Land Titling and Registry Reform Affect Land and Credit Markets : Evidencefrom Lesotho," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10043, The World Bank.

    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. Alain Desdoigts & Hugues Kouassi Kouadio, 2013. "Deforestation, Migration, Land Appropriation and Reforms: Rural resilience against the backdrop of the Malthusian crisis in Ivory Coast," Erudite Working Paper 2013-01, Erudite.
    2. KOUADIO, Hugues & DESDOIGTS, Alain, 2012. "Déforestation, migrations, saturation et réformes foncières: La Côte d’Ivoire entre résilience rurale et litiges fonciers [Deforestation, migration, saturation and land reforms: Côte d'Ivoire betwe," MPRA Paper 49938, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Bambio, Yiriyibin & Bouayad Agha, Salima, 2018. "Land tenure security and investment: Does strength of land right really matter in rural Burkina Faso?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 130-147.
    4. Kotchikpa Gabriel Lawin & Lota Tamini, 2018. "Droits de propriété foncière et performance des petits producteurs agricoles des pays en développement : une synthèse de la littérature empirique," CIRANO Working Papers 2018s-05, CIRANO.
    5. KOUADIO, Hugues, 2012. "Droit foncier, productivité et investissement dans l'agriculture : cas du café en Côte d'Ivoire [Land tenure, productivity and investment in agriculture: the case of coffee in Côte d'Ivoire]," MPRA Paper 49944, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Muna Shifa & Murray Leibbrandt & Martin Wittenberg, 2015. "Does tenure insecurity explain the variations in land-related investment decisions in rural Ethiopia?," SALDRU Working Papers 150, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    7. Taisuke Takayama & Hirotaka Matsuda & Tomoaki Nakatani & Kuniaki Saito, 2022. "Do partial land rights increase productivity and investment? evidence from the redistributive land reform in post–world war II Japan," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 60(2), pages 77-100, June.
    8. Gottlieb, Charles & Grobovšek, Jan, 2019. "Communal land and agricultural productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 135-152.
    9. Ali, Daniel Ayalew & Deininger, Klaus & Goldstein, Markus, 2014. "Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa: Pilot evidence from Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 262-275.
    10. Asaaga, Festus A. & Hirons, Mark A. & Malhi, Yadvinder, 2020. "Questioning the link between tenure security and sustainable land management in cocoa landscapes in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    11. Kimura, Yuichi, 2021. "Shackles of Kinship Bonds: Land Tenure Institutions and Smallholders' Farm Investments in Ghana," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315049, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    12. Zeng, Di & Alwang, Jeffrey & Norton, George & Jaleta, Moti & Shiferaw, Bekele & Yirga, Chilot, 2018. "Land ownership and technology adoption revisited: Improved maize varieties in Ethiopia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 270-279.
    13. Alia, Didier & Kusunose, Yoko & Theriault, Veronique, 2016. "Land rental, farm investment, productivity, and efficiency in Burkina Faso," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236169, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    14. Séogo, Windinkonté & Zahonogo, Pam, 2023. "Do land property rights matter for stimulating agricultural productivity? Empirical evidence from Burkina Faso," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    15. Kimura, Yuichi, 2023. "Why are overlapping land rights disincentive against investment in agriculture?: customary land tenure institution in West Africa," MPRA Paper 116613, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Qian, Chen & Antonides, Gerrit & Heerink, Nico & Zhu, Xueqin & Ma, Xianlei, 2022. "An economic-psychological perspective on perceived land tenure security: Evidence from rural eastern China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    17. Jing Li, 2019. "Land tenure and agricultural investments in China: a meta-regression analysis," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(2), pages 329-347, September.
    18. Hoang Huu Dinh & Shyam Basnet & Justus Wesseler, 2023. "Impact of Land Tenure Security Perception on Tree Planting Investment in Vietnam," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-23, February.
    19. Dillon, Brian & Voena, Alessandra, 2018. "Widows' land rights and agricultural investment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 449-460.
    20. Eskander, Shaikh M.S.U. & Barbier, Edward B., 2017. "Tenure Security, Human Capital and Soil Conservation in an Overlapping Generation Rural Economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 176-185.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    tenure security; investment time horizons; crop life cycle; outsiders; Ivory Coast;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights

    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:oup:jafrec:v:28:y:2019:i:2:p:147-175.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    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.