Cattle sharing and rental contracts in an Agrarian economy: evidence from Ethiopia
研究了埃塞俄比亚农村地区牛共享和租赁合同的不同类型及其采用原因，发现这些合同在人口密集、信贷和保险市场不发达的地区更常见，能帮助现金匮乏和信贷受限的家庭改善畜群动态、获取非牲畜资源并分担风险。
Abstract Empirical evidence on the role of cattle sharing and rental contracts in agrarian economies is limited. This article is an investigation of different types of cattle sharing and rental contracts producers in rural Ethiopia adopt. It also investigates why households in rural Ethiopia rely on these contracts that are vulnerable and therefore subject to potential moral hazard problems described in earlier literature. We apply random effect probit and control function econometric methods to household panel data collected in 2005 and 2007 from two agro‐ecological zones in Ethiopia. Controlling for the endogeneity of access to livestock credit, we find that contracts are spatially fragmented and better developed where population density is high and credit and insurance markets are poorly developed. We also find that contracts help cash poor and credit constrained households to improve their herd dynamics, to get access to nonlivestock resources (land, labor and cash) and share risks that could have been difficult without the contract. We show that contracts are rational responses of residents in rural communities characterized by imperfect credit and insurance services, since households with better access to credit are less likely to rely on contracts.