Cropsharing Tenancy in Agriculture: Comment.

The article presents comments of the author on a paper by P.K. Bardhan and T.N. Srinivasan, titled "Cropsharing Tenancy in Agriculture: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," published in the March 1971 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." Bardhan and Srinivasan constructed a simple theoretical model of sharecropping from which they were able to make several predictions and which they tested against Indian data. They claimed to have constructed a competitive theory of share tenancy in which the equilibrium share rental was parametrically given to all agents, which they contrasted with an earlier attempt at a general equilibrium model of sharecropping by S.N.S. Cheung. The author argues that Cheung was correct in describing a competitive theory of share tenancy, though the incompleteness of his treatment appears to have misled Bardhan and Srinivasan and possibly others. It follows that the analysis of Bardhan and Srinivasan is incorrect and that any attempt to modify their model while retaining the spirit of the original will ironically give rise to pure monopoly equilibrium.