NMBU's mission is to contribute to the well-being of the planet. Our interdisciplinary research generates innovations in food, health, environmental protection, climate and sustainable use of natural resources.
About NMBU
NMBU's research is enabling people all over the world to tackle the big, global challenges regarding the environment, sustainable development, how to improve human and animal health, renewable energy sources, food production, and land- and resource management.
We assess the spatial and intertemporal change patterns of farmland prices using per hectare minimum willingness to accept (WTA) sales and rental prices in Malawi. We use three rounds of nationally representative household farm panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS), collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016. We study price changes by splitting the sample in quintiles based on distance from the nearest major city, building on the von Thünen theory and urban growth model. Generally, WTA land prices decrease with distance from urban areas.
The paper discusses the link between commons as they might have been used in
prehistoric Norway and the rules concerning the exploitation of the commons as
found in the oldest known legislation for regions of Norway, Gulating Law and
Frostating Law. One clear social dilemma has been identified: the setting of a
common date for moving animals from the home fields up to the summer farms
and home again in the fall. The problem was obvious and the solution not
particularly difficult to institute. Many more problems were of course present,
We study how social preferences and norms of reciprocity are related to generalized and particularized trust among members of youth business groups in northern Ethiopia. Members of these groups are recruited among land-poor rural youth. The Ethiopian government promotes youth employment among land-poor rural youth by allocating them rehabilitated communal lands for the formation of sustainable businesses. The groups are organized as primary cooperatives, elect their own board, make their own bylaw and prepare a business plan that has to be accepted by the local government.
We assess the extent of access and degree of participation by smallholder tenants in the land rental market in Malawi. Our study is based on three rounds of nationally representative Living Standards Measurement Surveys collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016, from which we construct a balanced panel. We apply the transaction cost theory, which suggests transaction costs to be non-linear and depend on resource as well as socioeconomic characteristics within the customary tenure system that determines who hold, use and transfer land.
We investigate the extent of variation in output sharing in land rental contracts and alternative hypotheses to explain this variation. Close to half of the rental contracts in our study in northern Ethiopia have output shares that deviate from the dominant 50-50 equal sharing. Variation in land quality, the relative bargaining power of landlords and tenants, production risks and shocks are hypothesized to influence output shares. Matched data of landlords and tenants are used.
