Market power and voluntary land redistribution

Lucie Ménager (1, 2) , Christine Valente (3)

1 LEM - Laboratoire d'Économie Moderne
2 EQUIPPE - Economie Quantitative, Intégration, Politiques Publiques et Econométrie
3 School of Economics, Finance and Management

Inequality in land ownership remains a major issue in many developing countries, such as Brazil, Colombia, and South Africa. Donors advocate a new model of "willing-buyer/willing-seller\", market-led land redistribution, but actual redistribution has fallen short of expectations. Little effort has been made so far to formalize the obstacles to market-led land redistribution. In this paper, we show that oligopolistic owner-producers may resist land sales to poorer candidate-buyers not only because they have a lower willingness to pay for land but also because the entry of poorer entrants threatens tacit collusion.

Mots clés: Land reform; Oligopoly

Domaines: Economies et finances

Lucie Ménager, Christine Valente. Market power and voluntary land redistribution. 2011. ⟨hal-00867615⟩