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Does sharecropping affect productivity and long-term investment ? evidence from West Bengal's tenancy reforms

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  • Deininger, Klaus
  • Jin, Songqing
  • Yadav, Vandana

Abstract

Although transfer of agricultural land ownership through land reform had positive impacts on productivity, investment, and political empowerment in many cases, institutional arrangements in West Bengal -- which made tenancy heritable and imposed a prohibition on subleasing -- imply that early land reform benefits may not be sustained and gains from this policy remain well below potential. Data from a listing of 96,000 households in 200 villages, complemented by a detailed survey of 1,800 owner-cum tenants, point toward binding policy constraints and large contemporaneous inefficiency of share tenancy that is exacerbated by strong disincentives to investment. A conservative estimate puts the efficiency losses from such arrangements in any period at 25 percent.

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  • Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing & Yadav, Vandana, 2012. "Does sharecropping affect productivity and long-term investment ? evidence from West Bengal's tenancy reforms," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6293, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6293
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    1. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Mohanraj Adhikari, 2016. "From sharecropping to crop-rent: women farmers changing agricultural production relations in rural South Asia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(4), pages 997-1010, December.

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    Political Economy; Labor Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Debt Markets; Municipal Housing and Land;
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