Agricultural Chutes and Ladders: New Estimates of Sharecroppers and “True Tenants” in the South, 1900–1920

Alston, Lee J.; Kauffman, Kyle D.

doi:10.1017/s0022050700018544

Cited by 27 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…We do this for three reasons. First, as Alston and Kauffman (1997) note, in some years enumerators at the Census of Agriculture seem to have confused their own definitions and misclassified farms between categories. Second, rates of tenancy and sharecropping are correlated at the county-level and the effects of tenancy on other outcomes are similar; for example, see Bloome and Muller (2015); Bloome, Feigenbaum, and Muller (2017) on the effects of tenancy on marriage.…”

Section: Puts It Clearlymentioning

confidence: 99%

Capital Destruction and Economic Growth: The Effects of Sherman's March, 1850-1920

Feigenbaum¹,

Lee²,

Mezzanotti³

2018

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Using General William Sherman's 1864--65 military march through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina during the American Civil War, this paper studies the effect of capital destruction on short-and long-run local economic activity, and the role of financial markets in the recovery process. We match an 1865 US War Department map of Sherman's march to county-level demographic, agricultural, and manufacturing data from the 1850-1920 US Censuses. We show that the capital destruction induced by the March led to a large contraction in agricultural investment, farming asset prices, and manufacturing activity. Elements of the decline in agriculture persisted through 1920. Using information on local banks and access to credit, we argue that the underdevelopment of financial markets played a role in weakening the recovery. * We thank

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Section: Puts It Clearlymentioning

confidence: 99%

Capital Destruction and Economic Growth: The Effects of Sherman's March, 1850-1920

Feigenbaum¹,

Lee²,

Mezzanotti³

2018

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“…4 In the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a life cycle to contract choice, which agricultural economists referred to as the agricultural ladder. The 'ladder' referred to the movement with age from the statuses of wage worker to tenant to owner Alston and Ferrie (2005); Alston and Kauffman (1997) and (Alston and Kauffman 1998). Climbing the rungs on the ladder meant acquiring human and physical capital as well as improving socioeconomic status.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priests, Conflicts and Property Rights: the Impacts on Tenancy and Land Use in Brazil

Alston

Mueller

2018

Man and the Economy

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Compared to the rest of the world, farmers in Brazil rely relatively little on tenant contracts. In agriculture, career mobility is associated with moving up the agricultural ladder from working for wages to renting to owning (Alston, L.J., and J.P. Ferrie. 2005. “Time on the Ladder: Career Mobility in Agriculture,” 1890-1938 The Journal of Economic History 65(04): 1058–1081. Cambridge University Press). Alone, this fact may not present a puzzle, but coupled with the large number of landless peasants and large amounts of unused land, the question is, Why don't landowners with unused or underutilized land negotiate land rental contracts with the landless.? In Brazil, this avenue for advancement has been hurt by a reluctance of owners to rent in areas experiencing land conflict. The lack of rentals is an important issue because Brazil is geographically a large country, roughly the size of the continental United States and has an expanding agricultural frontier, some of which is cutting into the Amazon. If the lack of land rentals is pervasive across Brazil and also signals inefficiency in production, the total magnitude is likely to be large when summed across the country.

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“…4 In the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a life-cycle to contract choice which agricultural economists referred to as the agricultural ladder. The 'ladder' referred to the movement with age from the statuses of wage worker to tenant to owner [Alston and Ferrie (2005); Alston and Kauffman (1997) and (1998)]. Climbing the rungs on the ladder meant acquiring human and physical capital as well as improving socio-economic status.…”

Section: Theoretical Hypotheses About Tenancymentioning

confidence: 99%

Property Rights, Land Conflict and Tenancy in Brazil

Alston

Mueller

2010

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Tenancy has been a means for labor to advance their socioeconomic condition in agriculture yet in Brazil and Latin America, tenancy rates are low compared to the U.S. and the OECD countries. We test for the importance of insecure property rights in Brazil on the reluctance of landowners to rent because of a fear of expropriation arising from land reform. Since 1964, the Land Statute in Brazil has targeted rental lands for redistribution. The expropriation of farms, resulting from land conflicts, is currently at the heart of land reform policies in Brazil. Land conflicts are a means for landless peasants to bring attention to land reform agencies for the need for redistribution. Land conflicts may also signal to landowners that their land is at risk for expropriation. Utilizing data across all counties in Brazil, we found that land conflicts reduce the likelihood of tenancy. This result implies: a reduction in agricultural efficiency; a reduction in the well-being of potential tenants, now landless peasants; and an expansion of the agricultural frontier through deforestation. Because of endogeneity between land tenancy and land conflict we instrument land conflict with Catholic priests.

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Agricultural Chutes and Ladders: New Estimates of Sharecroppers and “True Tenants” in the South, 1900–1920

Cited by 27 publications

References 5 publications

Capital Destruction and Economic Growth: The Effects of Sherman's March, 1850-1920

Capital Destruction and Economic Growth: The Effects of Sherman's March, 1850-1920

Priests, Conflicts and Property Rights: the Impacts on Tenancy and Land Use in Brazil

Property Rights, Land Conflict and Tenancy in Brazil

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