Agricultural Development and Land Tenancy in a Peasant Economy: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

In this paper we have a two‐season model of agricultural production in a peasant economy, with labor unemployment in the lean season, land rationing at a conventionally fixed crop share by a monopolistic landlord who is also the financier of consumption credit for the sharecropper families. We then work out hypotheses about the relation of the equilibrium percentage of area under tenancy with land quality factors, labor‐intensity of crops, extent of unemployment, interest rates, weather uncertainty, etc. Most of the hypotheses are confirmed by interstate cross‐section evidence from India in early 1950s.