ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a number of methodological approaches which have been used to explain land relations—tenancy, sharecropping and interlinking, distress sales, dualistic land ownership distributions, classes, and land reform—and their variations over space and time. It argues that the explanatory power of theories on land relations hinges on the complexity, market imperfections, and distortions admitted in the analysis. The chapter illustrates that only a framework that, in addition to asymmetric information, accounts for material characteristics of agricultural production, rent seeking, and policy distortions, can satisfactorily explain the phenomena characteristic of agricultural land markets in LDCs. It shows that the emergence of large farms in many developing countries was based on power relations and distortions, and also argues that the international competitiveness of these farms is often maintained by subsidies, associated with significant social losses. The transition from landlord estates to family farms in a market economy has led to stable systems of production relations.
