Asset-ownership and tenure in sugarcane production
Date
1983
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Abstract
The literature shows that contracts arise to bring together agents with different endowments of physical and human capital as well as risk-bearing capacities. The coexistence of different contracts is shown to depend on worker characteristics, i.e., differences in the choice of contracts in a risky environment reflect an underlying distribution of means of production, with the more endowed laborers choosing to be tenants and the less endowed ones hired as wage-workers. The screening model is adopted to show that information is transmitted via contractual choice. The hypothesis is confirmed using both logit and OLS procedures to test survey data.