This paper analyses the empirical determinants of contract length, a key andyet neglected dimension of contractual structure. I estimate contract length andcontract type jointly using original data on tenancy agreements signed between1870 and 1880 in the district of Siracusa, Italy.The findings...

The choice of cultivation techniques is a key determinant of agricultural productivityand has important consequences for income growth and poverty reductionin developing countries. Using household data from Nicaragua this papershows that the choice of cultivation techniques depends on farmers’...

This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literatureon the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. Itaddresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between propertyrights and...

We show that the effect of eviction threats on unobservable investment effort can be positive. Wedemonstrate this apparently counter-intuitive result in a model of tenancy where investment by atenant in the current period raises the chances of doing well in the next period, and...

The well-known inverse relationship between farm size and productivity is usually explained in terms ofdiminishing returns with respect to land and other inputs coupled with various types of market frictions thatprevent the efficient allocation of land across farms. We show that even in the...

We analyze optimal contract choice in agriculture when there is joint moral hazard onthe part of the farmer in the supply of effort and the riskiness of the technique ofcultivation. In the presence of limited liability, high-powered incentive contracts such asfixed rental contracts will induce...