The Relation Between Property Rights, Farm Size and Technical Efficiency for the Developing Countries' Agricultural Sector

Arash Dourandish, Sayed Saghaian, Naser Shahnoushi Forushani, Nazanin Mohammadrezazadeh, Sina Kuhestani

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that the quality of property rights, farm size and market imperfections significantly affect agricultural efficiency. This article investigates the interaction between the quality of property rights and size when the countries are heterogeneous in degree of market imperfection, using a multilevel statistical approach for a sample of 84 developing countries. The results show a positive relation between technical efficiency and quality of property rights and a negative relation between farm size and quality of property rights. Furthermore, the results reject the regularly stated inverse relation between farm size and technical efficiency. In addition, the results show that market imperfections significantly affect the relations between technical efficiency and the explanatory variables. According to the results, increasing the farm size in countries with well-defined property rights reduces agricultural efficiency. On the other hand, in the majority of developing countries with low quality of property rights, the relation between farm size and technical efficiency is statistically significant and positive.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)749-762
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of International Development
Volume32
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords

  • agricultural efficiency
  • developing countries
  • farm size
  • market imperfection
  • property rights

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Development

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