TENURE SECURITY, INVESTMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY IN GAMBIAN AGRICULTURE -A GENERALIZED PROBIT ANALYSIS

The determinants of investment, input use, and productivity are invest igated under customary tenure in peri-urban areas of the Gambia. A str uctural model is specified to investigate the role of tenure security on farm investments and input use and thereby on yield. Testing of the structural form hypotheses requires simultaneous equation estimation. Containing both continuous and discrete endogenous variables, the mod el is estimated as a feasible generalized least squares Amemiya's gene ralized probit. Some of the positive relationships hypothesized betwee n tenure security, investment, and yields are corroborated. In particu lar, tenure security is found to enhance longterm investments, which i n turn enhance yields.