Land Market Institutions and Agricultural Productivity in Ukraine

Ukraine’s agriculture increasingly contributes to global food security. However, there is a significant untapped agricultural production and export potential with the country. Weak land governance and institutions, including the moratorium on farmland sales, are generally recognized as the major source of a significant agricultural productivity gap in Ukraine. In this paper we match a rich farm-level accounting data with a unique set of land governance indicators to measure the role of land institutions in enhancing agriculture productivity. Controlling for farm specific characteristics, land institutions turned out to have quite sizable impact on productivity.