Fixed-rent contracts and investment incentives. A comparative analysis of English tenant right

Abstract

This article stresses that tenants are more motivated to improve the holding when they have formal property rights over their improvements. In this case, however, their rights over the improvements usually come into conflict with the landlords' rights over the land. Through a comparison with what happened elsewhere in Europe, the article analyses the attempts to delineate and ensure both rights in nineteenth-century England. No wholly satisfactory solution was found to the problem and the article concludes that this is one of the reasons explaining the poor performance of English agriculture in the early twentieth century.