Publication: Does Sharecropping Affect Productivity and Long-Term Investment? Evidence from West Bengal’s Tenancy Reforms
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2012-12
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2013-01-28
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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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“Jin, Songqing; Deininger, Klaus; Yadav, Vandana. 2012. Does Sharecropping Affect Productivity and Long-Term Investment? Evidence from West Bengal’s Tenancy Reforms. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 6293. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12185 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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