IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/miffrp/265405.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Factor Market Activity And The Inverse Farm Sizeproductivity Relationship In Tanzania

Author

Listed:
  • Wineman, Ayala
  • Jayne, Thomas S.

Abstract

Although the inverse farm size-productivity relationship (IR) is sometimes used to motivate arguments in favor of smallholder-led agricultural development, it remains unclear what drives this relationship. It may be attributed to market imperfections that compel small farms to use land more intensively than large farms. Using a three-wave longitudinal household survey from Tanzania, we examine whether the intensity of the IR is related to local factor market activity for land, labor, credit, and animal and machine traction. The IR is evident in Tanzania, although it disappears when family labor is valued at the prevailing local agricultural wage rate. This suggests that labor market imperfections (possibly linked to other market failures) drive the IR. Furthermore, the IR is significantly weakened in the presence of relatively active markets for most factors of production. This suggests that the IR is at least partly driven by imperfections in rural factor markets, underscoring the importance of strategies to improve the functioning of these markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Wineman, Ayala & Jayne, Thomas S., 2017. "Factor Market Activity And The Inverse Farm Sizeproductivity Relationship In Tanzania," Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Papers 265405, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security (FSP).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:miffrp:265405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/265405/files/FSP%20Research%20Paper%2079.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/265405/files/FSP%20Research%20Paper%2079.pdf?subformat=pdfa
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Juliano J. Assunção & Luis H. B. Braido, 2007. "Testing Household-Specific Explanations for the Inverse Productivity Relationship," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 980-990.
    2. Gourlay,Sydney & Kilic,Talip & Lobell,David, 2017. "Could the debate be over ? errors in farmer-reported production and their implications for the inverse scale-productivity relationship in Uganda," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8192, The World Bank.
    3. Jayne, Thomas S. & Chamberlin, Jordan & Traub, Lulama & Sitko, N. & Muyanga, Milu & Yeboah, Felix & Nkonde, Chewe & Anseeuw, Ward & Chapoto, Anthony & Kachule, Richard, 2015. "Africa's Changing Farmland Ownership: The Rise of the Emergent Investor Farmer," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212028, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Ayala Wineman & Thomas S Jayne, 2018. "Land Prices Heading Skyward? An Analysis of Farmland Values across Tanzania," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 40(2), pages 187-214.
    5. Deininger, Klaus & Zegarra, Eduardo & Lavadenz, Isabel, 2003. "Determinants and Impacts of Rural Land Market Activity: Evidence from Nicaragua," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 1385-1404, August.
    6. Hazell, Peter & Poulton, Colin & Wiggins, Steve & Dorward, Andrew, 2010. "The Future of Small Farms: Trajectories and Policy Priorities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 1349-1361, October.
    7. Barrett, Christopher B., 1996. "On price risk and the inverse farm size-productivity relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 193-215, December.
    8. Michael R. Carter & Keith D. Wiebe, 1990. "Access to Capital and Its Impact on Agrarian Structure and Productivity in Kenya," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 72(5), pages 1146-1150.
    9. Klaus Deininger & Songqing Jin & Yanyan Liu & Sudhir K. Singh, 2018. "Can Labor-Market Imperfections Explain Changes in the Inverse Farm Size–Productivity Relationship? Longitudinal Evidence from Rural India," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 94(2), pages 239-258.
    10. Fermont, Anneke & Benson, Todd, 2011. "Estimating yield of food crops grown by smallholder farmers: A review in the Uganda context," IFPRI discussion papers 1097, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    11. Amartya K. Sen, 1966. "Peasants and Dualism with or without Surplus Labor," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74, pages 425-425.
    12. de Janvry, Alain & Fafchamps, M. & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 1991. "Peasant Household Behavior with Missing Markets: Some Paradoxes Explain," CUDARE Working Papers 198579, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    13. Dillon, Brian & Barrett, Christopher B., 2017. "Agricultural factor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa: An updated view with formal tests for market failure," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 64-77.
    14. Michael Kevane, 1996. "Agrarian Structure and Agricultural Practice: Typology and Application to Western Sudan," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 78(1), pages 236-245.
    15. Calogero Carletto & Sydney Gourlay & Paul Winters, 2015. "Editor's choice From Guesstimates to GPStimates: Land Area Measurement and Implications for Agricultural Analysis," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE), vol. 24(5), pages 593-628.
    16. Deininger, Klaus & Hilhorst, Thea & Songwe, Vera, 2014. "Identifying and addressing land governance constraints to support intensification and land market operation: Evidence from 10 African countries," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 76-87.
    17. Assunção, Juliano & Braido, Luis H.B., 2007. "AJAE Appendix: Testing Household-Specific Explanations for the Inverse Productivity Relationship," American Journal of Agricultural Economics APPENDICES, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 1-8, November.
    18. Lamb, Russell L., 2003. "Inverse productivity: land quality, labor markets, and measurement error," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 71-95, June.
    19. Barrett, Christopher B. & Bellemare, Marc F. & Hou, Janet Y., 2010. "Reconsidering Conventional Explanations of the Inverse Productivity-Size Relationship," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 88-97, January.
    20. Carter, Michael R, 1984. "Identification of the Inverse Relationship between Farm Size and Productivity: An Empirical Analysis of Peasant Agricultural Production," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 36(1), pages 131-145, March.
    21. de Janvry, Alain & Fafchamps, Marcel & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 1991. "Peasant Household Behaviour with Missing Markets: Some Paradoxes Explained," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(409), pages 1400-1417, November.
    22. Hanan G. Jacoby, 1993. "Shadow Wages and Peasant Family Labour Supply: An Econometric Application to the Peruvian Sierra," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(4), pages 903-921.
    23. Mellor, John W., 2014. "High rural population density Africa – What are the growth requirements and who participates?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 66-75.
    24. Benjamin, Dwayne & Brandt, Loren, 1997. "Land, Factor Markets, and Inequality in Rural China: Historical Evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 460-494, October.
    25. Bliss, C. J. & Stern, N. H., 1982. "Palanpur: The Economy of an Indian Village," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198284192.
    26. Benjamin, Dwayne, 1992. "Household Composition, Labor Markets, and Labor Demand: Testing for Separation in Agricultural Household Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(2), pages 287-322, March.
    27. Yamauchi, Futoshi, 2016. "Rising real wages, mechanization and growing advantage of large farms: Evidence from Indonesia," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 62-69.
    28. repec:eee:deveco:v:130:y:2018:i:c:p:84-98 is not listed on IDEAS
    29. Donald F. Larson & Keijiro Otsuka & Tomoya Matsumoto & Talip Kilic, 2014. "Should African rural development strategies depend on smallholder farms? An exploration of the inverse-productivity hypothesis," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 45(3), pages 355-367, May.
    30. Eswaran, Mukesh & Kotwal, Ashok, 1986. "Access to Capital and Agrarian Production Organisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 96(382), pages 482-498, June.
    31. Heath Henderson, 2015. "Considering Technical and Allocative Efficiency in the Inverse Farm Size–Productivity Relationship," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(2), pages 442-469, June.
    32. Heltberg, Rasmus, 1998. "Rural market imperfections and the farm size-- productivity relationship: Evidence from Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(10), pages 1807-1826, October.
    33. Daniel Ayalew Ali & Klaus Deininger, 2015. "Is There a Farm Size–Productivity Relationship in African Agriculture? Evidence from Rwanda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 91(2), pages 317-343.
    34. Deininger, Klaus & Savastano, Sara & Xia, Fang, 2017. "Smallholders’ land access in Sub-Saharan Africa: A new landscape?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 78-92.
    35. Desiere, Sam & Jolliffe, Dean, 2018. "Land productivity and plot size: Is measurement error driving the inverse relationship?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 84-98.
    36. Benjamin, Dwayne, 1995. "Can unobserved land quality explain the inverse productivity relationship?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 51-84, February.
    37. Feder, Gershon, 1985. "The relation between farm size and farm productivity : The role of family labor, supervision and credit constraints," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2-3), pages 297-313, August.
    38. Carletto, Calogero & Savastano, Sara & Zezza, Alberto, 2013. "Fact or artifact: The impact of measurement errors on the farm size–productivity relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 254-261.
    39. Klaus Deininger & Songqing Jin & Yanyan Liu & Sudhir K Singh, 2016. "Can Labor Market Imperfections Explain Changes in the Inverse Farm Size–Productivity Relationship? Longitudinal Evidence from Rural India," Working Papers id:10987, eSocialSciences.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ags:miffrp:265405. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (AgEcon Search). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/damsuus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.