Institutions and Agricultural Development

This dissertation deals with an area that can be regarded as an intersection between agricultural economics, development economics, and institutional economics. A specific focus lies on property rights in the agricultural sector of Tanzania. In this regard, the dissertation has three goals: 1) to generate insights regarding whether property rights are effective at increasing agricultural productivity; 2) to generate insights regarding how property rights can be used as a policy instrument so as to alleviate poverty in developing countries; and 3) to generate insights regarding whether property rights can be used as a policy instrument in order to promote structural transformation processes in developing countries. Besides the focus on Tanzania, studies on the silk sector may also be conducted within the dissertation, in this case with a focus on policies that are associated with the development of the silk sector in developing countries.