土地调整、地权稳定性与农民长期投资激励

中国的家庭联产承包责任制与农业经济增长之间的关系受到了众多经济学家的关注。现有研究普遍认为土地调整破坏了农民土地使用权的稳定性,从而削弱了农民的长期投资激励。本文将农户的长期投资划分为两类,“与特定地块不相连的长期投资”以及“与特定地块相连的长期投资”,通过实证研究发现,土地调整对农户的这两类长期投资决策的影响是不同的。本文的主要结论有:“减人减地”使农户的第一类长期投资大幅度下降,“增人增地”对农户的第一类长期投资没有什么影响;“减人减地”和“增人增地”对农户的农家肥使用量都没有什么影响。但是,我们并不能把“减人减地”导致的以及大调整所可能导致的第一类长期投资的减少完全归咎于土地调整所导致的低效率。     

Land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures: Theoretical and empirical analyses

This article develops a theoretical framework to examine the relationship between land tenure arrangements and households' investment in soil-improving and conservation measures. It then analyzes this relationship with a multivariate probit model based on detailed plot-level data from villages in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. A major hypothesis tested is that investment in productivity-enhancing and conservation techniques are influenced by land tenure arrangements. The theoretical analysis and empirical results generally reveal that land tenure differences significantly influence farmers' decisions to invest in land-improving and conservation measures. The findings also show that tenure security does affect farm productivity.     

Property rights on First Nations reserve land

This paper examines the economic effects of existing private property rights on First Nations reserves. We focus on three regimes of land tenure: lawful possession, designated land and permits. These land regimes have been used to create individual landholdings and grant secure and transferable rights of use of reserve land. Using confidential census microdata and rich administrative data, we find evidence of a positive relationship between the use of these tenure regimes and homeownership rates, housing conditions and band's public spending. We also observe a positive relationship with average income. However, this last result is driven by the inflow of a non-Indigenous population not by improvements in Indigenous households’ income or on-reserve employment. Our findings thus suggest that while reforms to individual property rights on reserve have some positive effects, their scope remains limited and they are unlikely to constitute a transformative tool to alleviate poverty on reserve.     

Cultural barriers to market integration: Evidence from 19th century Austria

I explore the relationship between culture and market integration using data from 19th century Austria and find that religious, not ethnic, differences between regions increase price differentials for grains. I argue that an important mechanism is cultural patronage in the placement of transportation infrastructure. The results show that railroad construction was more intensive between religiously similar places and that religious diversity within regions is negatively correlated with road and rail density. As a secondary mechanism, I argue that regions with more religious diversity enjoyed greater competition in agricultural markets after the elimination of religious discrimination in land tenure institutions. The results support this hypothesis, showing that within regions, religious diversity is negatively correlated with grain prices. The findings highlight the importance of culture and institutions in economic development and are relevant for culturally diverse regional economies today.     

The Nature of Property Rights in Haiti: Mode of Land Acquisition,Gender, and Investment

In Haiti, two primary pathways to land ownership are through the purchase of land and through inheritance. In terms of inheritance, intestate law treats daughters and sons equally with respect to real property. Despite the formal law, we find that women are relatively less tenure secure on their inherited land than men. In contrast, men and women share similar perceptions of tenure security on purchased land. These differences become manifest in conservation investment activities: tree planting, fallowing, and terracing. We find evidence that these activities are less likely to occur by female respondents on their inherited land.     

Tenure security and land-related investment: Evidence from Ethiopia

We use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity. While we find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees, this is not the case for terraces. Transfer rights are unambiguously investment-enhancing. The large productivity effect of terracing implies that, even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security, the level of such investment may be below the social optimum. In Ethiopia, government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity.     

Who Owns the Land? Perspectives from Rural Ugandans and Implications for Large-Scale Land Acquisitions

Rapidly growing demand for agricultural land is putting pressure on property-rights systems, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where customary tenure systems have provided secure land access. Rapid and large-scale demands from outsiders are challenging patterns of gradual, endogenous change toward formalization. Little attention has focused on the gender dimensions of this transformation. However this contribution, based on a 2008–09 study of land tenure in Uganda, analyzes how different definitions of land ownership – including household reports, existence of ownership documents, and rights over the land – provide very different indications of the gendered patterns of land ownership and rights. While many households report husbands and wives as joint owners of the land, women are less likely to be listed on ownership documents, and have fewer rights. A simplistic focus on “title” to land misses much of the reality regarding land tenure and could have an adverse impact on women's land rights.     

The causal relationship between equipment investment and infrastructures on economic growth in China

There is agreement in the literature on economic growth concerning the transitory effects of capital accumulation on the process of economic development. However, controversy arises if this effect is permanent. In this sense, the key point is the embodied technological progress and whether supply factors predominate among the determinants of capital accumulation. Only in this case should expect long-run effects of capital accumulation on economic growth. Inspired by this idea, I focus the study on two elements accounting for economic development—equipment investment and productive infrastructure and I also analyze the type of the empirical relationship that exists between them. The results indicate that equipment investment and infrastructures have played a significant role in accounting for long-run growth in China. However, I do not find empirical evidence supporting any relationship between the two types of investment. In addition, I find that foreign trade has stimulated output and equipment investment in the long run. Finally, it is found that innovation activities encourage equipment investment in the long run.     

韩国的土地利用规划体系和农村综合开发规划

韩国的土地国情和农业经营特点与我国十分相似。文章分析了韩国土地利用规划体系的构成及其主要特点,以及在农村综合开发和农村城市化过程中的作用。最后简要论述了乡村土地利用规划在中国国土规划中的重要性和迫切性,希望能为我国的农村综合开发和城镇化发展提供一些借鉴。     

Migration,remittances and human capital investment in Kenya

This paper investigates the relationship between international migration, remittances, and human capital investment in Kenya. We use household‐level data from the 2009 Kenya Migration Household Survey (which was part of the Africa Migration Project) to test our hypothesis and uncover a positive and significant relationship between the amount of international remittances a household receives and the amount of expenditures allocated to education (for all levels of education). We consider various robustness checks and find that our results hold up to various specifications, including an instrumental variable approach.     

The impact of governance and transparency on firm investment in Vietnam

A large literature asserts a causal relationship between the quality of economic governance and economic performance. However, attempts to establish such a link at an aggregate level have met with considerable methodological criticism. This paper seeks to overcome this limitation. We match a panel of Vietnamese enterprises from 2006 to 2010 with a unique panel dataset measuring sub‐national economic governance to estimate a relationship between local governance and private investment. We do not find a significant relationship between investment and most traditional forms of governance. However, there is one important exception – transparency, especially the public posting of planning documents, is strongly associated with higher investment across a range of different specifications. Our results have significant implications for policy, given the prevailing theory that changes in the quality of local economic governance will spur improved economic performance.     

Security of property rights and transition in land use

Price and yield uncertainty are traditional considerations in agricultural markets and their impact on development. Agricultural producers in transition economies face an additional risk factor – changes in the institutional protection of property rights. This paper illustrates how institutional uncertainty may affect investment, land use, and crop mix patterns. In particular, in the Ukrainian example, the rights of tenants are viewed as uncertain in anticipation of establishment of an open market for sale of agricultural land. Establishment of the land market in Ukraine has been postponed several times over the last 15 years and a significant number of lease contracts are not formalized. A large panel of farm-level data was used to show that a higher share of rented land is associated with a lower share of land used for investment intensive perennial crops controlling for prices and other factors. The difference in response to uncertainty is found to be significant among three crop types: perennials, grains and oil crops. The implication is that the lower level of protection of use rights and uncertainty regarding the future regulation of land sales market lead to under-investments in more capital intensive crops. As a result, tenants deviate from the optimal crop mix, reducing the productivity of tenant farms. Farms under 200 ha are affected most negatively as they are less likely to be able to access the level of legal and political protection enjoyed by large farms.     

Analysis of the impact of agricultural R&D investment on food security

This article investigates how agricultural R&D investment affects the food self-sufficiency ratio (SSR). Several studies have argued a causal relationship between agricultural R&D investment and food security. However, most of these studies are based on conceptual logic and few studies have conducted an empirical analysis. This study verifies whether agricultural R&D investment affects the food SSR as a representative indicator of food security. A total of 822 data sets of 41 countries have been used in the analysis in this study and include developed and developing country data over the period 1981–2009. Food self-efficiency is used as a dependent variable, and agricultural R&D investment and other variables are used as explanatory variables. The estimation results show that, first, the cereal SSR and income are in an inverted U-shaped relationship. Second, increases in land productivity increase the cereal SSR and, lastly, the cereal SSR ratio and agricultural R&D investment are in a U-shaped relationship.     

Land Tenancy and Non-Contractible Investment in Rural Pakistan

Commitment failure lies at the core of incomplete contract theory, yet its quantitative significance has rarely been assessed. Using detailed plot-level data from rural Pakistan, we find that non-contractible investment is underprovided on tenanted land, even after controlling for the endogeneity of leasing decisions. Our evidence also indicates that moral hazard in investment effort alone cannot explain this inefficiency. Instead, imperfect commitment appears to be the driving mechanism, since even plots taken on fixed rent contracts where all the rent is paid upfront receive lower investment than owner-cultivated plots. We further show that a considerable portion of the variation in tenancy duration, and hence in the security of tenure, is due to heterogeneity across landlords. One interpretation of this finding is that landlord reputation is important in mitigating hold-up.     

Is wealth found in the soil or in the brain? Investing in farm people in Malawi

Should a typical developing country invest more in agriculture or education? At what stage of development is it optimal to invest more in each of these sectors? These are important questions that governments of developing countries grapple with when designing investment plans. In this paper, I propose a soil–human capital conceptual framework of development and use it to explain estimates of agricultural returns to schooling in Malawi. I use panel survey data for Malawi and rely on the exogenous education policy changes and spatial variation in access to schooling to identify effects of schooling on agricultural incomes. In addition, I correct for selection into income activities within a panel data and instrumental variables estimation framework. I find annual agricultural returns to schooling in Malawi of 3%–4% after correcting for selection and unobserved heterogeneity and 7% in the uncorrected specifications. I also find consistently higher returns to schooling in the nonagricultural sector for those not living in the village of birth and higher returns in the agricultural sector for those living in the village of birth. Given the size of the farm sector, wealth in Malawi is still in the soil, but that future growth in wealth depends on human capital investments.     

The growth effect of trade openness on African countries: Evidence from using an instrumental variable panel smooth transition model

This paper assesses the relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Africa by accounting for the heterogeneity of African countries. In addition, the paper contributes to the literature on trade openness and economic growth nexus by applying the instrumental variable panel smooth transition regression, a methodology that accounts for nonlinearity and endogeneity in the relationship between the two variables. The results of the empirical analysis reveal that the investment ratio is a channel through which trade openness affects economic growth in the African continent. In addition, the relationship between trade openness and economic growth varies according to the degree of a country's development in Africa. The study finds a negative relationship between openness and growth in low-income countries. Conversely, for upper-income countries, the coefficients of trade indicators are positive and statistically significant. The results indicate that African countries are not homogeneous, especially concerning trade openness and economic growth nexus.     

The role of top management team diversity in shaping the performance of business model innovation: a threshold effect

Business model innovation is one of the firm’s most important strategic decisions. Top management team (TMT), as the critical decision-makers, has essential influence upon such decisions. However, the role of TMT diversity in shaping the performance of business model innovation is less explored in the literature. Based on a sample dataset of 906 observations of small and medium enterprises from China Startups Stock Market during the period of 2009–2011, we find that TMT diversity exhibits a significant threshold effect on the relationship between business model innovation (in terms of novelty-centred and efficiency-centred business model) and firm performance. More specifically, when TMT functional diversity arrives at a certain level, the positive relationship between novelty-centred business model and firm performance becomes more pronounced. On the other hand, the positive relationship between efficiency-centred business model innovation and firm performance will be more significant when TMT tenure diversity increases to a certain level.     

Birds of a feather: Evidence on commonality of corruption and democracy in the origin and location of foreign investment in Russian regions

We examine the effects of subnational variations in corruption and democratization on the location decisions of foreign investors in Russian regions using firm-level panel data for the period 1996–2007. We link these effects to the level of corruption and type of political regime in the country of origin of a foreign investor. We find a relationship between attributes of foreign investors' home countries and attributes of the regions in which investment takes place: foreign investors from less corrupt and democratic countries tend to invest in less corrupt and more democratic Russian regions, whereas those from more corrupt and non-democratic countries tend to invest in more corrupt and less democratic regions. An inference is that, in Russian regions with high corruption and with autocratic government, foreign direct investment appears driven by the personal interests of controlling regional political elites who collaborate for mutual gain with foreign investors from corrupt and autocratic countries. Our results suggest a general conclusion that origin and location of foreign investment are linked by common political culture.     

制度-垄断地租与中国地方政府竞争:一个马克思主义分析框架

竞争性地方政府作为改革以来形成的重要制度形式,在相当程度上决定了中国社会主义市场经济体制的特点。本文不仅承续了既有文献中将地方政府的经济动机归于租金,并将土地财政视为地方政府利用租金开展战略投资的观点,而且试图在一个马克思主义框架内进一步发展这一观点。为此我们对租金的生产性利用和国家的经济作用的关系做了初步探讨,并将大卫·哈维的制度-垄断地租理论运用于分析中国地方政府围绕营建环境的投资活动。本文的基本结论是,中国地方政府在以土地财政为核心的战略投资中,充当了租金的生产性分配者和使用者的角色,并因之嵌入了原本由企业之间的竞争所带来的相对剩余价值生产过程,形成了中国经济特有的相对剩余价值生产双重结构,从而在相当长的时间内造就了世所罕见的高投资率,推动了中国经济的持续快速增长。     

From Maputo to Malabo: public agricultural spending and food security in Africa

Africa is the world’s biggest battleground in the fight against hunger. African governments and the international development community have increasingly focused on finding ways and means to end hunger and ensure the right and access to food for the continent’s burgeoning population. Public spending on agriculture is one such measure. This study examines the role government spending on agriculture has played in enhancing the state of Africa’s food security over the past 25 years. We examine the existing relationship between the two, whether this relationship varies over time and space, and whether it depends on the amount spent. We explore various aspects of food security and check whether spending on research and development follows the same patterns as the overall public agricultural spending. We find some evidence of significant beneficial effects of public agricultural spending on food security but only for the countries which allocate greater proportions of their budgets to agriculture. Spending on agricultural research and development also shows a positive impact on Africa’s food security. There also exists some evidence supporting the temporal effects of public spending. We consider that the Maputo Declaration commitment to allocate at least 10% of public spending to agriculture pertinent.