IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdi/wpaper/835.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Moral Hazard and Marshallian Inefficiency:Evidence from Tunisia

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Louis ARCAND
  • AI
  • ETHIER

Abstract

We formalize the link between optimal cost-sharing contracts and the production technology in the presence of moral hazard by appealing to several well-known results from duality theory. Building on intuitions from the interlinkage literature, we show that optimal contractual structure is determined by the (i) substitution possibilities that exist between di¤erent observable factor inputs, as well as (ii) between these inputs and unobservable e¤ort. We endogenize contractual choice using landlord characteristics as instruments, exploiting the fact that, in our dataset, landlords interact with several tenants and vice versa. The approach is applied to an unbalanced plot-level panel of cost sharing contracts in a Tunisian village, using a translog representation of the restricted profit function. Contractual terms are found to be a significant determinant of input use and therefore lead to Marshallian inefficiency, while the optimality of the underlying contractual structure is rejected.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Louis ARCAND & AI & ETHIER, 2005. "Moral Hazard and Marshallian Inefficiency:Evidence from Tunisia," Working Papers 200534, CERDI.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdi:wpaper:835
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2005/2005.34.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Braverman, Avishay & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1982. "Sharecropping and the Interlinking of Agrarian Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(4), pages 695-715, September.
    2. Russell Davidson & James G. MacKinnon, 2006. "The case against JIVE," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 827-833, September.
    3. Thomas, Duncan & Strauss, John, 1997. "Health and wages: Evidence on men and women in urban Brazil," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 159-185, March.
    4. Donald, Stephen G & Newey, Whitney K, 2001. "Choosing the Number of Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1161-1191, September.
    5. Christensen, Laurits R & Jorgenson, Dale W & Lau, Lawrence J, 1973. "Transcendental Logarithmic Production Frontiers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(1), pages 28-45, February.
    6. Jewitt, Ian, 1988. "Justifying the First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1177-1190, September.
    7. Otsuka, Keijiro & Hayami, Yujiro, 1988. "Theories of Share Tenancy: A Critical Survey," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 31-68, October.
    8. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel, 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications (II): Applications of the Theory of Production," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, volume 2, number fuss1978a.
    9. Hahn, Jinyong & Hausman, Jerry, 2002. "Notes on bias in estimators for simultaneous equation models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 237-241, April.
    10. Blomquist, Soren & Dahlberg, Matz, 1999. "Small Sample Properties of LIML and Jackknife IV Estimators: Experiments with Weak Instruments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 69-88, Jan.-Feb..
    11. Avishay Braverman & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1986. "Cost-Sharing Arrangements under Sharecropping: Moral Hazard, Incentive Flexibility, and Risk," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 68(3), pages 642-652.
    12. Mundlak, Yair, 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 69-85, January.
    13. Andrews, Donald W K, 1989. "Power in Econometric Applications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(5), pages 1059-1090, September.
    14. Shaban, Radwan Ali, 1987. "Testing between Competing Models of Sharecropping," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(5), pages 893-920, October.
    15. Luiz M. Cruz & Marcelo J. Moreira, 2005. "On the Validity of Econometric Techniques with Weak Instruments: Inference on Returns to Education Using Compulsory School Attendance Laws," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(2).
    16. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel (ed.), 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780444850133.
    17. Fuller, Wayne A, 1977. "Some Properties of a Modification of the Limited Information Estimator," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 939-953, May.
    18. Ai, Chunrong & Arcand, Jean-Louis & Éthier, François, 1998. "Inefficacité marshallienne, partage de coûts et modèles contractuels avec marchés manquants," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 74(3), pages 315-341, septembre.
    19. Bekker, Paul A, 1994. "Alternative Approximations to the Distributions of Instrumental Variable Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 657-681, May.
    20. Donald W. K. Andrews, 1999. "Consistent Moment Selection Procedures for Generalized Method of Moments Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(3), pages 543-564, May.
    21. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1995. "Selection corrections for panel data models under conditional mean independence assumptions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 115-132, July.
    22. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman, 2003. "Weak Instruments: Diagnosis and Cures in Empirical Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 118-125, May.
    23. Diewert, W E, 1971. "An Application of the Shephard Duality Theorem: A Generalized Leontief Production Function," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(3), pages 481-507, May-June.
    24. John Shea, 1997. "Instrument Relevance in Multivariate Linear Models: A Simple Measure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 348-352, May.
    25. Ekaterini Kyriazidou, 1997. "Estimation of a Panel Data Sample Selection Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1335-1364, November.
    26. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman, 2002. "A New Specification Test for the Validity of Instrumental Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 163-189, January.
    27. Angrist, J D & Imbens, G W & Krueger, A B, 1999. "Jackknife Instrumental Variables Estimation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 57-67, Jan.-Feb..
    28. Pranab Bardhan & Nirvikar Singh, 1987. "On Moral Hazard and Cost Sharing under Sharecropping," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 69(2), pages 382-383.
    29. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    30. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Mohamed Salah Matoussi, 1995. "Moral Hazard, Financial Constraints and Sharecropping in El Oulja," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(3), pages 381-399.
    31. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel, 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications (I): The Theory of Production," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, volume 1, number fuss1978.
    32. Semykina, Anastasia & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2010. "Estimating panel data models in the presence of endogeneity and selection," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 157(2), pages 375-380, August.
    33. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman & Guido Kuersteiner, 2004. "Estimation with weak instruments: Accuracy of higher-order bias and MSE approximations," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 7(1), pages 272-306, June.
    34. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1979. "Optimal incentive contracts with imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-259, April.
    35. Blackorby, Charles & Diewert, W E, 1979. "Expenditure Functions, Local Duality, and Second Order Approximations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(3), pages 579-601, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Deininger, Klaus & Ali, Daniel Ayalew & Alemu, Tekie, 2011. "Productivity effects of land rental markets in Ethiopia : Evidence from a matched tenant-landlord sample," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5727, The World Bank.
    2. Ghebru, Hosaena H. & Holden, Stein T., 2012. "Reverse-Share-Tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency: Bargaining Power of Landowners and the Sharecropper’s Productivity," 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil 126883, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Jacoby, Hanan G. & Mansuri, Ghazala, 2009. "Incentives, supervision, and sharecropper productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 232-241, March.
    4. Jean-Louis ARCAND & Mbolatiana DE MONTALEMBERT RAMBONILAZA, 1999. "Is Adverse Selection Relevant? Spence-Mirlees Meets the Tunisian Peasant," Working Papers 199923, CERDI.
    5. Benin, Samuel & Place, Frank & Nkonya, Ephraim M. & Pender, John L., 2006. "Land Markets and Agricultural Land Use Efficiency and Sustainability: Evidence from East Africa," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25645, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Pender, John L. & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2001. "Land lease markets and agricultural efficiency: theory and evidence from Ethiopia," EPTD discussion papers 81, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Rabia Mazhar & Hossein Azadi & Steven Van Passel & Rando Värnik & Marcin Pietrzykowski & Rytis Skominas & Zou Wei & Bi Xuehao, 2023. "Does Contract Length Matter? The Impact of Various Contract-Farming Regimes on Land-Improvement Investment and the Efficiency of Contract Farmers in Pakistan," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-16, August.
    8. Muhammad Waqar Akram & Nida Akram & Wang Hongshu & Shahla Andleeb & Khalil ur Rehman & Umair Kashif & Ayesha Mehmood, 2019. "Impact of Land Use Rights on the Investment and Efficiency of Organic Farming," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-18, December.
    9. Ananish Chaudhuri & Pushkar Maitra, 1997. "Determinants of Land Tenure Contracts; Theory and Evidence from Rural India," Departmental Working Papers 199710, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    10. Hagos, Hosaena Gebru & Holden, Stein T., 2013. "Reverse-share-tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency: Landowners’ bargaining power and sharecroppers’ productivity," IFPRI discussion papers 1270, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    11. Ananish Chaudhuri, 1997. "A Dynamic Model of Contractual Choice in Tenancy," Departmental Working Papers 199711, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    12. Niee Foning, Maxime & Kane, Gilles Quentin & Ambagna, Jean Joël & Fondo, Sikod & Abayomi Oyekale, Samuel, 2013. "The effect of incomplete land tenure contracts on agricultural investment and productivity in Cameroon," MPRA Paper 62752, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Nida Akram & Muhammad Waqar Akram & Hongshu Wang & Ayesha Mehmood, 2019. "Does Land Tenure Systems Affect Sustainable Agricultural Development?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-15, July.
    14. Hsiao, Cheng & Nugent, Jeffrey & Perrigne, Isabelle & Qiu, Jicheng, 1998. "Shares versus Residual Claimant Contracts: The Case of Chinese TVEs," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 317-337, June.
    15. Dubois, Pierre, 2002. "Moral hazard, land fertility and sharecropping in a rural area of the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 35-64, June.
    16. Paltasingh, Kirtti Ranjan & Basantaray, Amit Kumar & Jena, Pabitra Kumar, 2022. "Land tenure security and farm efficiency in Indian agriculture: Revisiting an old debate," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    17. Claudio ARAUJO & Catherine ARAUJO BONJEAN & Jean-Louis ARCAND, 1999. "Capital humain, productivité agricole, et travail féminin : variables latentes et séparabilité dans les modèles de ménage," Working Papers 199912, CERDI.
    18. Bellemare, Marc F., 2010. "Insecure Land Rights and Share Tenancy in Madagascar," MPRA Paper 23640, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Bidisha, Sayema Haque & Hossain, Md. Amzad & Alam, Rubaiyat & Hasan, Md. Mehedi, 2018. "Credit, tenancy choice and agricultural efficiency: Evidence from the northern region of Bangladesh," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 22-32.
    20. Konrad B Burchardi & Selim Gulesci & Benedetta Lerva & Munshi Sulaiman, 2019. "Moral Hazard: Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 281-347.
    21. Nasim, Sanval & Helfand, Steven & Dinar, Ariel, 2020. "Groundwater management under heterogeneous land tenure arrangements," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    22. Xinjian Chen & Di Zeng & Ying Xu & Xiaojun Fan, 2018. "Perceptions, Risk Attitude and Organic Fertilizer Investment: Evidence from Rice and Banana Farmers in Guangxi, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-14, October.
    23. Jean-Louis ARCAND & CONNING & ETHIER, 1999. "Class position and Economic Behavior in a Tunisian Village: Selective Separability in a Multi-Factor Household Model," Working Papers 199911, CERDI.
    24. Narayan Das & Alain de Janvry & Elisabeth Sadoulet, 2019. "Credit and Land Contracting: A Test of the Theory of Sharecropping," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1098-1114.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    2. Nam-Hyun Kim & Winfried Pohlmeier, 2015. "A Regularization Approach to Biased Two-Stage Least Squares Estimation," Working Paper series 15-22, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    3. Markus Frölich & Michael Lechner, 2004. "Regional treatment intensity as an instrument for the evaluation of labour market policies," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2004 2004-08, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    4. Emma M. Iglesias & Garry D. A. Phillips, 2012. "Almost Unbiased Estimation in Simultaneous Equation Models With Strong and/or Weak Instruments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 505-520, June.
    5. Namhyun Kim & Winfried Pohlmeier, 2016. "A Note on the Regularized Approach to Biased 2SLS Estimation with Weak Instruments," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(6), pages 915-924, December.
    6. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Paul J. Devereux, 2009. "Improved JIVE Estimators for Overidentified Linear Models with and without Heteroskedasticity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(2), pages 351-362, May.
    7. Alexandre Dmitriev, 2013. "Institutions and growth: evidence from estimation methods robust to weak instruments," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(13), pages 1625-1635, May.
    8. Matsushita, Yukitoshi & Otsu, Taisuke, 2024. "A jackknife Lagrange multiplier test with many weak instruments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 116392, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Léandre BASSOLE & Jean-Louis ARCAND, 2006. "Does Community Driven Development Work? Evidence from Senegal," Working Papers 200606, CERDI.
    10. Dufour, Jean-Marie & Taamouti, Mohamed, 2007. "Further results on projection-based inference in IV regressions with weak, collinear or missing instruments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 133-153, July.
    11. Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, 2007. "Finite sample evidence of IV estimators under weak instruments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 677-694.
    12. Hausman, Jerry & Stock, James H. & Yogo, Motohiro, 2005. "Asymptotic properties of the Hahn-Hausman test for weak-instruments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 333-342, December.
    13. Bekker, Paul A. & Crudu, Federico, 2015. "Jackknife instrumental variable estimation with heteroskedasticity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 332-342.
    14. Eswaramoorthy, K., 1991. "U.S. livestock production and factor demand: a multiproduct dynamic dual approach," ISU General Staff Papers 1991010108000010523, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    15. Carlos Velasco & Xuexin Wang, 2021. "Instrumental variable estimation via a continuum of instruments with an application to estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption," Working Papers 2024-09-06, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    16. John C. Chao & Jerry A. Hausman & Whitney K. Newey & Norman R. Swanson & Tiemen Woutersen, 2012. "Combining Two Consistent Estimators," Advances in Econometrics, in: Essays in Honor of Jerry Hausman, pages 33-53, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    17. Crompton, Paul & Lesourd, Jean-Baptiste, 2008. "Economies of scale in global iron-making," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 74-82, June.
    18. Russell Davidson & James G. MacKinnon, 2006. "The case against JIVE," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 827-833, September.
    19. Bekker, Paul A. & Lawford, Steve, 2008. "Symmetry-based inference in an instrumental variable setting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 28-49, January.
    20. John C. Chao & Norman R. Swanson, 2005. "Consistent Estimation with a Large Number of Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1673-1692, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Keywords: moral hazard; Profit functions; Sharecropping; Marshallian inefficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • Q10 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdi:wpaper:835. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vincent Mazenod (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceauvfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.