مدت زمان قرارداد و تقسیم کار در اجاره زمین های کشاورزی

Short-term contracts provide weak incentives for durable input investment if post-contract asset transfer is difficult. Our model shows that when both agents provide inputs, optimal contract length balances the weak incentives of one agent against the other's. This perspective broadens the existing contract duration literature, which emphasizes the tradeoff between risk sharing and contracting costs. We develop hypotheses and test them based on private grazing contracts from the Southern Great Plains. We find broad support for the implications of our model. For example, landowners provide durable land-specific inputs more often under annual than multi-year contracts.

In his seminal article on agricultural land leases, Cheung (1969) discusses the choice of contract duration as a component of contract design. He argues that long leases are chosen when the costs of transferring tenant assets attached to the land are high, or if the depreciation of assets beyond the contract period are difficult to assess and therefore difficult to price for transfer to the landowner. On the other hand, short-term contracts reduce the costs of enforcing contract stipulations and the costs of renegotiation or tenant dismissal in the face of market uncertainties, poor tenant performance, or disputes over poorly defined rights to assets. When the tenant's land-specific assets are exhausted within the contract period or if the landowner provides the land-specific permanent assets, then short-term contracts become more viable.

The relationship between contract duration, input longevity, and the division of input responsibilities is an important aspect of contract design that has received relatively little attention in the large literature on agricultural land lease contracts. Benefits from agricultural inputs may extend beyond the contract period, and when private actions cannot be monitored or inferred exactly from output and property rights to assets are not readily transferred at the end of the contract, each party is a partial, not complete, residual claimant of input investment, so private input incentives are weak and do act to maximize total contract value.