Albania's radical agrarian reform

Economic Development and Cultural Change

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 605-619

  Cungu, Azeta ^a   Swinnen, Johan F M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN   (Belgium)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRARIAN REFORM; LAND RIGHTS; PRIVATIZATION; RURAL ECONOMY;

ALBANIA;

EID: 0032767752     PISSN: 00130079     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/452421     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. CEECs include Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia.
2. Johan F. M. Swinnen and Erik Mathijs, "Agricultural Privatization, Land Reform and Farm Restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Analysis," in Agricultural Privatization, Land Reform and Farm Restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Johan Swinnen, Allan Buckwell, and Erik Mathijs (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 333-73.
3. Erik Mathijs and Johan F. M. Swinnen, "The Economics of Agricultural Decollectivization in East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union," Economic Development and Cultural Change 47, no. 1 (October 1998): 1-26.
4. Idriz Xhamara, "Land Reform in Albania and Its Macroeconomic and Social Impacts," unpublished report (Albanian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Tirana, 1995).
5. Adrian Civici, "La question foncière dans la restructuration de l'économie agricole en Albanie" (The land tenure issue in the restructuring of the agricultural sector in Albania), unpublished report (Agricultural University of Tirana, 1994).
6. At present, 44% of Albania's agricultural land is lowland, 18.5% is mountainous, and 37.5% is hilly. Lowland and hillside area has doubled over the past 50 years because of state investments in drainage, land reclamation, and terracing. Hence, mountainous land made up a much higher share of the agricultural land in 1945 than it does today.
7. Frederich Pryor, The Red and the Green - the Rise and Fall of Collectivized Agriculture in Marxist Regimes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 550.
8. See Civici (n. 5 above).
9. Albanian Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, data provided by the macroeconomics department (Tirana: Albanian Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, 1997).
10. Government of Albania, "Albania - Post-conflict Rehabilitation: A Framework of Economic Policies, 1997-2000," unpublished report (Government of Albania, Tirana, September 1997).
11. See Azeta Cungu and Johan F. M. Swinnen, "Agricultural Privatization and Decollectivization in Albania: A Political Economy Perspective," in Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Johan F. M. Swinnen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 55-89, for an extended account of the reform process.
12. David Stanfield, S. Lastarria-Cornhiel, J. Bruce, and E. Friedman, "Consolidating Property Rights in Albania's New Private Farm Sector," unpublished report (University of Wisconsin - Madison, Land Tenure Center, 1992).
13. See Cungu and Swinnen (n. 11 above) for an explanation of the differences in the privatization process between Agricultural Production Cooperatives and State Farms.
14. Albanian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, The 1993 Annual Yearbook (Tirana: Albanian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, 1994).
15. Later acts provided for land renting and the creation of a land market. Yet the effective functioning of these markets is inhibited by remaining uncertainties over property rights, mainly because of slow titling, perplexities with compensating former owners, and slow progress with land registration. Cungu and Swinnen (n. 11 above) provide a detailed discussion of these issues and of the relevant legal responses.
16. To this moment, no steps have been taken for the implementation of this law.
17. Christopher Grace, "The Hill and Mountain Farmers of Albania," unpublished report (SARA/U.S. Agency for International Development, Tirana, 1995).
18. Johan F. M. Swinnen, "The Choice of Privatization and Decollectivization Policies in Central and Eastern European Agriculture: Observations and Political Economy Hypotheses," in Swinnen, ed. (n. 11 above), pp. 363-98.
19. In fact, additional interest groups and internal heterogeneity exist within these three groups. For example, pre-1945 landowners included both large landlords and smaller farmers. Also, 1946-48 landowners were former owners too, but quite different from the pre-1945 landowners.
20. Swinnen.
21. Ibid.
22. Mancur Olson, The Logic of the Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 176.
23. Mathijs and Swinnen (n. 3 above).
24. Joseph E. Stiglitz, "Incentives, Organizational Structures, and Contractual Choice in the Reform of Socialist Agriculture," in The Agricultural Transition in Central and European Europe and the Former U.S.S.R., ed. Avishay Braverman, Karen Brooks, and Csaba Csaki (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993), pp. 27-46.
25. Swinnen and Mathijs (n. 2 above).
26. Michalis Hatziprokopiou, Giannis Karagiannis, and Kostas Velentzas, "Production Structure, Technical Change, and Productivity Growth in Albanian Agriculture," Journal of Comparative Economics 22 (1996): 295-310.