IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/agecon/v48y2017i5p549-560.html

Incentives and moral hazard: plot level productivity of factory-operated and outgrower-operated sugarcane production in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Mengistu Assefa Wendimu
  • Arne Henningsen
  • Tomasz Gerard Czekaj

Abstract

We investigate the rather unique contractual arrangement between one of the largest sugar factories in Ethiopia and its adjacent outgrower associations. The only significant difference between the sugarcane production on the factory-operated plantation and on the outgrower-operated plots is the remuneration system and thus, the incentives to the workers. We compare the productivity of these two production models based on a new cross-sectional plot-level data set. As sugarcane production depends on various exogenous factors that are measured as categorical variables (e.g. soil type, cane variety, etc.), we estimate the production function by a nonparametric kernel regression method that takes into account both continuous and categorical explanatory variables without assuming a functional form. Our results show that outgrower-operated plots have−ceteris paribus−a significantly higher productivity than factory-operated plots, which can be explained by outgrowers having stronger incentives to put more effort in their work than the employees of the sugar factory.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Mengistu Assefa Wendimu & Arne Henningsen & Tomasz Gerard Czekaj, 2017. "Incentives and moral hazard: plot level productivity of factory-operated and outgrower-operated sugarcane production in Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 48(5), pages 549-560, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:agecon:v:48:y:2017:i:5:p:549-560
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/agec.2017.48.issue-5
    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

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Meilin Ma & Richard J. Sexton, 2021. "Modern agricultural value chains and the future of smallholder farming systems," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(4), pages 591-606, July.
    2. Bellemare, Marc F. & Bloem, Jeffrey R., 2018. "Does contract farming improve welfare? A review," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 259-271.
    3. Jenifer Piesse & Beatrice Conradie & Colin Thirtle & Nick Vink, 2018. "Efficiency in wine grape production: comparing long†established and newly developed regions of South Africa," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(2), pages 203-212, March.
    4. Wendimu, Mengistu Assefa & Henningsen, Arne & Gibbon, Peter, 2016. "Sugarcane Outgrowers in Ethiopia: “Forced” to Remain Poor?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 84-97.
    5. Moseki, Ofentse & Murray-Hudson, Michael & Kashe, Keotshephile, 2019. "Crop water and irrigation requirements of Jatropha curcas L. in semi-arid conditions of Botswana: applying the CROPWAT model," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    6. Meilin Ma & Jessie Lin & Richard J. Sexton, 2022. "The Transition from Small to Large Farms in Developing Economies: A Welfare Analysis," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(1), pages 111-133, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

    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:agecon:v:48:y:2017:i:5:p:549-560. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.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.