麻省理工--发展经济学讲义.pdfVIP

1 Agriculture: The e?ciency of land use ? Share of agriculture in employment is close to 50% for the world as a whole (50% in China, 57% in India). ? Is land used e?ciently? 1.0.1 Farm size and productivity: observed relationship ? Farm size productivity di?erences: see table. ? Pro?t-Wealth ration and weather variability (monsoon outset is a measure of the risk faced by the farmer): see ?gure — The Pro?t-Wealth ratio is always greater for small farmers — Small farmers’ pro?ts are hurt much more by uncertainty than large farmers’ 1.0.2 Why is this surprising? ? Arguments for increasing returns (the opposite relationship) — Technology with ?xed costs (tractors, etc..) — Larger farmers have better access to capital — Larger farmers have better access to politically allocated inputs (evidence from Africa in a book by Bates “Market and states in tropical Africa”). — The best farmer will have more land... ? Mitigating factors: — Rental markets in farm machinery — Technological change in not very rapid. Saviness not that important. 1.0.3 What could be going on: Arguments for decreasing returns ? — Agency problems: large farms are cultivated by hired labor, which has fewer incentive to work hard. Small farms are owner cultivated. ? Redistributing land will create more owner cultivated land which will be more productive. — But why cannot the owner of the land not give the right incentive to the farmers? 1.0.4 Di?erent potential explanations for the observed inverse productivity relationship: ? Di?erences in land quality ? Di?erences in farmer characteristics ? Incentive Problems Problem with the observed relationship: all of this could be going on... How can we separate these different e?ects. 1.0.5 Evidence: Study by Biswanger and Rosenzweig ? Using ICRISAT data: very detailed panel (repeated observation for every household) data from India. ? Some individuals cultivate both an owner-operated plot and a rented plot. ? Biswanger and Rosenzweig compare the inputs they apply