IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/pseptp/halshs-00754535.html

Property Rights Imperfections, Asset Allocation and Welfare: Co-ownership in Bulgaria

Author

Listed:
  • Liesbet Vranken

    (LICOS Center for Institutions and Economic Performance - KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences [Leuven-Heverlee] - KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

  • Karen Macours

    (PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Nivelin Noev

    (European Commission - European Commission [Brussels])

  • Johan Swinnen

    (LICOS Center for Institutions and Economic Performance - KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, University of Leuven - KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

Abstract

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect households' allocation of assets using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the effects of this type of property rights imperfection because of the asset restitution process in the 1990s. In Bulgaria, where co-ownership is very prominent and land is strongly fragmented, the land reform and inheritance legislation allows identifying the impact of co-ownership by taking advantage of a discontinuity created by a minimum plot size law. We find that land in co-ownership is more likely to be used by less efficient farm organizations or to be left abandoned, and that it is related to significant welfare losses. The paper hence provides evidence of sub-optimal land allocation following a privatization that established formal but imperfect property rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Liesbet Vranken & Karen Macours & Nivelin Noev & Johan Swinnen, 2011. "Property Rights Imperfections, Asset Allocation and Welfare: Co-ownership in Bulgaria," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754535, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-00754535
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2010.12.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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. Liesbet Vranken & Ewa Tabeau & Peter Roebeling & Pavel Ciaian, 2021. "Agricultural land market regulations in the EU Member States," JRC Research Reports JRC126310, Joint Research Centre.
    2. repec:lic:licosd:35414 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Jérémie GIGNOUX & Karen MACOURS & Liam WREN-LEWIS, 2015. "Impact of land administration programs on agricultural productivity and rural development: existing evidence, challenges and new approaches," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 96(3), pages 467-498.
    4. repec:lic:licosd:35514 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Van Herck, Kristine & Vranken, Liesbet, "undated". "Direct Payments and Land Rents: Evidence from New Member States," Working papers 157121, Factor Markets, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    6. repec:lic:licosd:16906 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Ricker-Gilbert, Jacob & Lunduka, Rodney W. & Kanyamuka, Joseph Samuel & Jumbe, Charles & Kaiyatsa, Stevier & Chamberlin, Jordan, "undated". "Do Farm Land Rental Markets Really Promote Efficiency, Equity and Investment in Smallholder African Agriculture? Evidence from a Matched Tenant-Landlord Survey in Malawi," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258391, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. Macours, Karen, 2014. "Ethnic divisions, contract choice, and search costs in the Guatemalan land rental market," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-18.
    9. Macours, Karen & Swinnen, Johan F.M., 2008. "Rural-Urban Poverty Differences in Transition Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 2170-2187, November.
    10. Ivan Takáč & Jarmila Lazíková & Ľubica Rumanovská & Anna Bandlerová & Zuzana Lazíková, 2020. "The Factors Affecting Farmland Rental Prices in Slovakia," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-18, March.
    11. Suresh Chaudhary & Yukuan Wang & Amod Mani Dixit & Narendra Raj Khanal & Pei Xu & Bin Fu & Kun Yan & Qin Liu & Yafeng Lu & Ming Li, 2020. "A Synopsis of Farmland Abandonment and Its Driving Factors in Nepal," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-22, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:hal:pseptp:halshs-00754535. 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: Caroline Bauer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.