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

农业错配、职业选择和总生产率——不安全的土地权和缺失的金融市场的作用

基本信息

批准号：
ES/L012499/1
负责人：
Jan Grobovsek
金额：
$ 41.46万
依托单位：
University of Edinburgh
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2014
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2014 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FL012499%2F1
关键词：
Agricultural Misallocation Occupational Choice Aggregate

项目摘要

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.

与先进经济体相比，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。农业的这种特殊的低效率是一个谜。我们认为，这在一定程度上可以通过农场之间生产要素（特别是土地）的分配不当来解释--例如，一些农场使用太多土地，而另一些农场使用太少土地。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。首先，我们计划找出上述分配不当的原因。其次，我们打算计算减少分配不当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，这些政策可能使GDP增加多少。此外，我们感兴趣的是这些政策对具有不同特征（技能，财富，性别，年龄，职业等）的个人的福利影响。- 谁会获益谁会受损因此，我们的建议直接解决了主题1的呼吁，并间接解决主题2以及。我们假设两个原因分配不当。第一个是土地权利的不安全。在撒哈拉以南非洲的许多国家，农田在形式上属于公共所有，而农民个人则有权耕种。一些农民可能缺乏有效利用土地的技能，但由于没有出售或出租土地的权利，他们就经营土地。同时，有技能的农民无法有效地经营大量土地，因为他们无法获得公有土地，或者因为剩余的私有土地价格昂贵。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，因为这使他们可以免费使用土地，而最理想的情况是，他们宁愿出售土地使用权，在其他部门工作。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，农民持有土地可能不仅是为了生产目的，而且是作为一种资产，在出现不利冲击时出售。特别热衷于保险的农民可能会经营更多的土地，而不是效率高的土地，从而从效率相对高但不愿为土地使用支付保险费的农民那里榨取资源。还有一些人可能有足够的效率来增加土地所有权，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的假设的有效性，这两个国家的特点是土地使用权不安全和金融市场不发达。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哪些问题是针对具体国家的，哪些问题可以扩展到撒哈拉以南非洲更多地区和其他具有类似制度和市场特征的发展中国家。具体而言，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经济模型进行分析。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赖的。这一点至关重要，因为我们提出的政策变化可能会改变许多个人的决定，这反过来又会影响相对价格，并创造更多的经济变化。我们的方法考虑到了这种反馈效应，因此是了解政策改变会发生什么的理想工具。