The Role of Risk and Transaction Costs in Contract Design: Evidence from Farmland Lease Contracts in U.S. Agriculture
利用1999年美国农业经济与土地所有权调查数据，检验地主与佃农在分成租约与现金租约之间的选择，发现交易成本和风险分担动机的解释力有限，但双方的风险规避行为一致，且地主特征对合同选择有重要影响。
Abstract The objective of this article is to provide new empirical evidence on landlord‐tenant choices of share versus cash‐rent contracts in U.S. agriculture. The focus is on the contribution of explanatory variables that represent transaction costs, risk‐sharing incentives, or both. An empirical model of contract choice is tested against the 1999 Agricultural Economics and Land Ownership Survey (AELOS) and finds mixed evidence for low transaction cost and risk‐sharing‐incentive motives for landlord‐tenant choices of a share versus cash‐rent contract. However, the behavior of landlords and tenants is consistent with them being risk averse. Although it is standard to control for the riskiness of the principal's task that is contracted, we find that other attributes of the landlord are an important part of a relatively complex story for U.S. land tenancy contacting. The latter results have generally been ignored in other published landlord‐tenant contracting studies.