Sharecropping was sometimes efficient: sharecropping with compensation for improvements in European viticulture
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12386 |
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Title
Sharecropping was sometimes efficient: sharecropping with compensation for improvements in European viticultureAuthor (s)
Date
2016Publisher
WileyBibliographic citation
GARRIDO, Samuel. Sharecropping was sometimes efficient: sharecropping with compensation for improvements in European viticulture. Economic History Review (2016), online, pp. 1-27Type
info:eu-repo/semantics/articlePublisher version
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.12386/abstractSubject
Abstract
There is no consensus among specialists in agricultural contracts over whether the
long-term inefficiencies that classical economists attributed to sharecropping actually
exist. This article maintains that they do ... [+]
There is no consensus among specialists in agricultural contracts over whether the
long-term inefficiencies that classical economists attributed to sharecropping actually
exist. This article maintains that they do exist and are partly caused by the fact
that sharecropping is hardly compatible with the tenant being compensated for
improvements, viticulture being the main historical exception. In line with recent
contributions to the sharecropping literature, the article contends that the widely held
belief among scholars of agricultural contracts that sharecropping was very frequent in
Europe’s vineyards is incorrect. However, it also provides evidence of an issue whose
importance has gone largely unnoticed: prior to the twentieth century, many of the
European vineyards worked by sharecroppers had been created by the sharecroppers
themselves, through contracts which entitled them to compensation. Those contracts
abounded while viticulture depended basically on two inputs, land and labour. When
viticulture became a heavy consumer of capital, they were rapidly abandoned, but not
in Catalonia, with a paradoxical result: the Catalan rabassa morta contract, which for
centuries had made it possible to eliminate both the long- and short-term inefficiencies
of sharecropping, ended up becoming an obstacle to overcoming the short-term
inefficiencies. The article discusses why that happened. [-]
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Economic History Review (2016), onlineRights
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- ECO_Articles [692]