Browsing by Author "Dirimanova, Violeta"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

The Impact of Land Fragmentation on Property Rights in Bulgaria
(2008) Dirimanova, Violeta
"Property rights exist to secure individual interests when resources are scarce. The problems that may arise with a property system include: changes in formal institutions need time to be adopted by the social actors affected, cultural and social norms can influence patterns of institutional evolution, and a discrepancy may exist between legal rights and rights-in-practice. During the agrarian reform in Bulgaria, farmland was restituted to its pre-collectivization owners. All landowners have obtained their deeds even though land property rights are still absent in practice. One of the reform outcomes was severe fragmentation in terms of land ownership and use. As a result, benefits from farmland are low, and the cost component high. "The aim of the article is to examine the impact of land fragmentation on private property rights. In order to achieve this aim, I evaluate benefit and cost streams received by ownership, co-ownership, and land use rights. Multiple sources of information were used to analyze land property rights in Bulgaria such as legal framework, data about land fragmentation that was obtained by land administrative offices and the case studies from three study regions with different level of land fragmentation in Bulgaria. "Findings show that existence of co-ownership decreases the incentive of landowners to exercise their ownership rights; thus, land property rights are currently only partially exercised in practice. To counteract the fragmentation, farmers have started to exchange plots among them. The local co-owners have taken a leading position in land management vis-à-vis co-owners who live far from their mutual property. The state, meanwhile, is attempting to formalize the solutions that have emerged at the local level. Along with a softening of the farmland fragmentation problem, these state changes may lead to concentration of farmland in the hands of powerful actors."
The Importance of Local Networks for Solving Land Fragmentation Problems in Bulgaria
(2008) Dirimanova, Violeta
"Bulgaria as one of the transition countries in the Central and Eastern Europe has been conducted a land policy which aimed to give back user rights to individual owners and to privatize the physical assets from collective farms. The restitution of ownership rights has led to land fragmentation in ownership and use. The aim of this paper, in one side, is to investigate how land fragmentation in term affects contract arrangements between landowners and land users, and, on the other side, to demonstrate how local networks, informal and formal, solves land fragmentation problem. In order to explain the processes affected by land fragmentation it will be employed agricultural contract theory and social capital. First, the article reviews the appropriateness of each theory. Second, analyzes different informal and formal contract arrangements among landowners and land users by employed case study approach, and third, evaluates the role of local networks for solving land fragmentation. "The main argument in the article is that fragmented ownership generates high costs of searching for owners as well as high costs of contracting. Therefore, the informal contracts dominate among landowners and land users. The level of social capital is different between different actor groups: landowners, land users and local authority. Therefore, networks among three contractual groups were defined: first, among local/ absentee landowners and local farmers, second, among local landowners and outside framers through using local authority in the villages and third, among all land users. The findings lead to conclusion that local networks reduce costs of contracting even in a low trust/commutation environment among some of different groups of actors occurs. Also, local networks among different groups of actors are importance for solving land fragmentation."