Agricultural Misallocation, Occupational Choice and Aggregate Productivity - The Role of Insecure Land Rights and Missing Financial Markets

与发达经济体相比，大多数最不发达国家的农业劳动生产率极低，而非农业生产率仅略低。农业中的这种特别的低效是一个谜。我们认为，这在一定程度上可以解释为生产要素，特别是土地在农场之间的错误分配--例如，一些农场使用的土地太多，而另一些农场使用的土地太少。此外，比较农业和非农业工人的收入，令人费解的是，为什么这么多工人留在农业，表明不同职业之间的分配不当。我们项目的目的有两个。首先，我们计划找出上述错误分配的原因。其次，我们打算计算减少分配不公的政策如何改变农业、非农业以及最终的总生产率--也就是说，这些政策可能会增加多少GDP。此外，我们感兴趣的是，这些政策对具有不同特征(按技能、财富、性别、年龄、职业等)的个人的福利影响--谁将受益，谁可能损失？因此，我们的建议直接涉及本次呼吁的主题1，也间接涉及主题2。我们假设错误分配的两个原因。第一个问题是土地权利的不安全。在撒哈拉以南非洲的许多国家，农田正式属于公众，而农民个人则被授予耕种的权利。一些农民可能缺乏有效利用被授予土地的技能，但由于缺乏出售或出租土地的权利，他们经营着土地。与此同时，技术熟练的农民被禁止经营有效数量的土地，要么是因为他们无法获得公共土地，要么是因为剩余的私人拥有的土地价格高昂。这也影响到个人的职业选择。效率低下的农民可能会继续务农，因为这会让他们自由使用土地，而最好的情况是，他们更愿意出售土地并在其他部门工作。第二，土地分配不当是因为错过了金融市场。许多农民无法获得风险保险，也缺乏银行账户等储蓄机制。在这种情况下，农民持有土地不仅是为了生产目的，也是为了在出现不利冲击时将其作为一种资产出售。特别热衷于保险的农民可能会经营比效率更高的土地，耗尽了相对高效但不愿为土地使用支付保险费的农民的资源。还有一些可能足够有效地增加土地持有量，但受到信贷限制的阻碍。我们打算通过研究埃塞俄比亚和乌干达的具体案例来衡量我们假设的正确性，这两个国家的特点是土地比例高，土地保有权不稳定，金融市场不发达。为此，我们将通过社会调查收集必要的数据。选择这两个国家将有助于我们区分具体国家的问题和可以扩大到撒哈拉以南非洲更多区域的问题和具有类似体制和市场特征的其他发展中国家的问题。具体地说，我们计划对个人进行调查，以评估他们在面对现有政策、价格和市场安排时的决定。我们将使用结构性一般均衡模型经济进行分析。在这样的模型中，不同个体的决策和价格的形成都是相互依存的。这是至关重要的，因为我们提议的政策变化可能会改变许多人的决定，这反过来会影响相对价格，并创造更多的经济转变。我们的方法考虑到了这种反馈效应，因此是了解如果政策发生变化会发生什么的理想工具。

Compared to advanced economies, most of the least developed countries feature extremely low agricultural labour productivity while productivity in non-agriculture is only modestly low. This particular inefficiency in agriculture is a puzzle. We believe that it can partly be explained by misallocation of production factors, in particular of land, across farms - e.g. some farms use too much land and others too little. Besides, comparing incomes of workers in agriculture and non-agriculture, it is puzzling why so many workers remain in agriculture, indicating misallocation across occupations.The aim of our project is twofold. First, we plan to identify causes of the aforementioned misallocation. Second, we intend to compute how policies that diminish misallocation could change agricultural, non-agricultural and, ultimately, aggregate productivity - i.e. by how much could they potentially increase GDP. Also, we are interested in the welfare effects of such policies on individuals with distinct characteristics (by skill, wealth, gender, age, occupation, etc.) - who stands to gain and who may lose? As such our proposal directly addresses Theme 1 of the present Call and indirectly addresses Theme 2 as well.We hypothesise two reasons for misallocation. The first one is insecurity of land rights. In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, farmland formally belongs to the public while individual farmers are granted the right to farm it. Some farmers may lack the skills to use the granted land efficiently, but short of the right to sell or rent it out, they operate it. Meanwhile, skilled farmers are precluded from operating an efficient amount of land, either because they cannot get hold of communal land or because the remaining privately held land is expensive. This also affects the occupational choice of individuals. Inefficient farmers may remain in farming because it grants them free land usage while optimally they would prefer to sell that right and work in other sectors.Second, misallocation of land results from missing financial markets. Many farmers have no access to insurance against risks and also lack saving mechanisms such as a bank account. In such circumstances farmers may hold land not only for production purposes but also as an asset to be sold in the advent of adverse shocks. Farmers particularly keen on insurance may operate more land than what is efficient, draining resources from farmers who are relatively efficient but unwilling to pay an insurance premium for the land use. Still others may be efficient enough to increase landholdings, but are held back by credits constraints. We intend to measure the validity of our hypotheses by studying the specific cases of Ethiopia and Uganda, two countries characterised by a high fraction of land subject to insecure tenure and underdeveloped financial markets. For this we will collect the necessary data via a social survey. The choice of these two countries will help us distinguish between issues that are country-specific and those that can be extended to more regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries sharing similar institutional and market features. Specifically, we plan to run surveys of individuals to estimate their decisions in the face of existing policies, prices and market arrangements.We will use structural general equilibrium model economies for our analysis. In such models decisions of distinct individuals and the formation of prices are all interdependent. This is crucial, because our proposed policy changes may alter the decisions of many individuals, which in turn affects relative prices and creates even more economic shifts. Our approach takes into account such feedback effects and is hence an ideal tool to understand what would happen if policies were to change.