Abstract Although still at incipient stages in most areas, agricultural land markets in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are growing rapidly. While the literature on the region’s land markets is expanding, there has been little attention thus far paid to the drivers of land rental prices. We know quite little about whether and how land markets and land contracts respond to meso-scale factors such as spatial variations in land abundance, or to micro-level factors, such as household land endowments. In this paper, we study the response of land markets, and hence whether land market participation trends and land market rental prices respond to land scarcity. Drawing on nationally representative household survey data from Ethiopia, Malawi and Tanzania, which represent a large range of relative land scarcity conditions, we examine how land markets are responding to cross-sectional variations in land scarcity in terms of rental market participation rates, prices, and contractual arrangements. In all three countries, we document that rental market participation rates and land rental prices increase with land scarcity. We also find that land rental prices per hectare decrease with plot size. These land market responses and their heterogeneities have important implications for land distribution and land market policies.

中文翻译：

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土地租赁市场是否对撒哈拉以南非洲不断上升的人口压力和土地稀缺做出反应？

摘要 尽管大部分地区仍处于起步阶段，但撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）的农业土地市场正在快速增长。虽然关于该地区土地市场的文献正在扩大，但迄今为止很少有人关注土地租赁价格的驱动因素。我们对土地市场和土地合同是否以及如何对土地丰度的空间变化等中尺度因素或家庭土地禀赋等微观因素做出反应知之甚少。在本文中，我们研究了土地市场的反应，从而研究了土地市场参与趋势和土地市场租金价格是否对土地稀缺做出反应。利用来自埃塞俄比亚、马拉维和坦桑尼亚的具有全国代表性的住户调查数据，这些数据代表了大范围的相对土地稀缺状况，我们研究了土地市场如何在租赁市场参与率、价格和合同安排方面对土地稀缺的横截面变化做出反应。在所有三个国家，我们都记录了租赁市场参与率和土地租赁价格随着土地稀缺而增加。我们还发现每公顷土地的租金价格随着地块大小而下降。这些土地市场反应及其异质性对土地分配和土地市场政策具有重要意义。