Courts and contract enforcement in transition agriculture: theory and evidence from Poland

The paper investigates theoretically and empirically the role of courts for contract enforcement in transition agriculture. In a survey of 306 Polish farmers conducted in 1999, only 38.5% respondents reported to believe that they could use courts to enforce contracts with their most important customer. Furthermore, those who believed the legal system could be used would accept significant financial losses before taking action. We develop a theoretical model, based on the costs and benefits of court enforcement, which captures the boundary between contracts to be regarded as 'enforceable' and 'not-enforceable' and, simultaneously, the threshold of taking legal action. The empirical analysis strongly supports our model: (1) the farmers' responses can be explained by cost-benefit calculations regarding the use of courts, (2) the legal 'enforceability' of contracts depends not only on the efficiency of the legal system but also on the attributes of the transaction, the contracts and the relationship between buyer and seller and (3) the threshold of taking legal action is significantly influenced by indirect costs of court enforcement, such as the disruption of a valuable business relationship, and by the availability of alternative enforcement mechanisms.     

The Role of Risk and Transaction Costs in Contract Design: Evidence from Farmland Lease Contracts in U.S. Agriculture

The objective of this article is to provide new empirical evidence on landlord-tenant choices of share versus cash-rent contracts in U.S. agriculture. The focus is on the contribution of explanatory variables that represent transaction costs, risk-sharing incentives, or both. An empirical model of contract choice is tested against the 1999 Agricultural Economics and Land Ownership Survey (AELOS) and finds mixed evidence for low transaction cost and risk-sharing-incentive motives for landlord-tenant choices of a share versus cash-rent contract. However, the behavior of landlords and tenants is consistent with them being risk averse. Although it is standard to control for the riskiness of the principal's task that is contracted, we find that other attributes of the landlord are an important part of a relatively complex story for U.S. land tenancy contacting. The latter results have generally been ignored in other published landlord-tenant contracting studies.     

石油城市转型期土地协调利用评价研究——以黑龙江省大庆市为例

石油城市经济转型过程中,土地利用处于不断变化和调整过程中,深入研究城市土地利用系统偏离最优状态的程度和城市土地利用的潜力至关重要.以大庆市为例,基于土地利用协调度的内涵,从石油城市转型期经济效益、社会效益和环境效益3个子系统构建协调度评价指标体系,运用熵值法和协调度模型,分析其2000-2007年土地利用协调度和潜力度时序变化特征.结果表明:研究期内,大庆市土地利用协调度整体呈现线性递增的趋势,而经济效益、社会效益和生态效益子系统的变化却表现出不同的变化态势;土地利用系统经历了不协调、不太协调、基本协调、比较协调4个发展阶段,说明土地利用系统整体上能基本满足城乡发展对土地利用的要求,但是离最优状态还存在一定的差距,因此,只有进一步挖掘其潜力,才能促使土地利用状况利于转型期经济的增长和社会的发展,保持与环境相协调.