nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

after chayanov and lenin new paths of agrarian capitalism abstract the theory of peasant economy is dominated by two classic authors of largely contradictory views a v chayanov and v i lenin this paper begins by setting forth their contrasting interpretations of differentiation among the russian peasantry at the end of the nineteenth century and the contrasting theoretical frameworks of marginalism and marxism which underlie those interpretations it then proceeds to set its debate against certain aspects of current transformations in the agrarian structures of latin america which call for a transcendence of this classic debate in particular it is pointed out in conclusion that family farms far from being a feature of peasant societies are more common and more dominant in countries and regions which have experienced a relatively dynamic process of capitalist development

share contracts and their rationale lessons from marine fishing most of the existing literature on share contracts is based explicitly or implicitly on agriculture a sector in which share contracts are seldom dominant and apparently on the decline moreover since agricultural activities have some rather special characteristics the purpose of the present article is to analyse contractual choice and especially the choice of share contracts in a sector in which share contracts are dominant namely fishing in the process of explaining the dominance of share contracts in fishing the article also explains a some heretofore neglected features of these share contracts such as the way in which shares are calculated and the treatment of repair and maintenance expenditures b the nature and extent of interlinked transactions c the exceptional cases where share contracts are not used and d the relevance of varying environmental conditions and especially those of poor developing countries to the nature of contracts in fishing and to the differences therein between

the economic viability and stability of capitalised family farming an analysis of agricultural decollectivisation in peru agricultural decollectivisation in peru created a nascent capitalist family farm sector does the empirical fact of parcellisation suggest that small scale agriculture is optimal will land reconcentration occur with differentiation among the parceleros studying the causes and consequences of parcellisation provides insight into a number of questions relating to alternative production systems productive efficiency is compared between the parceleros and their co operative predecessors and among the parceleros some conclusions reached are 1 rice yields increased relative to the final years of co operative production 2 sample parceleros and co operatives exhibit similar levels of technical efficiency 3 the production potential of parcelled units is estimated to be less than that of a well functioning co operative system and 4 differentiation among parceleros is occurring as a range of incomes is realised from a more or less homogeneous resource base

tournaments and sharecropping this paper explores the incentive effects of a renewal clause in a lease the basis of selection is rank order performance the authors findings in the context of a principal agent model are as follows in order to extract greater effort from tenants i e agents the landlord the principal must commit to a reward scheme that provides a part of the second period income to the winner on the basis of past performance this payment provides insurance and creates incentives for agents to work harder in the current period it also makes the contract efficient ex post and renegotiation proof copyright 1996 by the london school of economics and political science

wealth effects distribution and the theory of organization abstract we construct a general equilibrium model of firm formation in which organization is endogenous firms are coalitions of agents providing effort and investment capital effort is unobservable unless a fixed monitoring cost is paid and borrowing is subject to a costly state verification problem because incentives vary with an agent s wealth different types of agents become attractive firm members under different circumstances when borrowing is not costly firms essentially consist of one type of agent and are organized efficiently but when the costly state verification problem is sufficiently severe firm organization will depend on the distribution of wealth with enough inequality it will tend to be dictated by incentives of rich agents to earn high returns to wealth even if the chosen organizational form is not a technically efficient way to provide incentives journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d2 d31 j41 l2

sharecropping and the capitalist transition in agriculture some evidence from the highlands of ecuador abstract sharecropping has been the subject of much debate among economists concerned with static efficiency and to some extent with equity this paper shifts the focus to the dynamics of structural change the research reported adds to the discussion a detailed account of a large number of sharecropping contracts and why they vary and offers a theory of the relationship between sharecropping as practised in the ecuadorian province of carchi and a particular pattern of structural change which is described as the transition to an agrarian structure dominated by capitalised family farms the prevalent use of wage labour on sharecropped land and the place of sharecropping in intergenerational asset transfers are shown to be important elements in explaining this transition

agriculture in recent development theory abstract this paper is a critical review of recent contributions to the literature on agriculture in development theory it considers and compares the main lines of advance made within neoclassical neo marxian and structuralist approaches recent neo marxian and structuralist studies of agrarian development reveal that traditional agriculture is neither stationary nor efficient that resource allocation cannot be separated from wealth distribution or production organization that forms of surplus appropriation do not necessarily follow the dictates of efficiency that the social relations of production may inhibit accumulation and determine the forms of technological change that the state s role in primitive accumulation is more economic than explicitly coercive political and that political and macroeconomic constraints preclude a simple get the prices right view of the intersectoral terms of trade the thrust of these developments is to challenge both neoclassical and some orthodox marxian formulations of agrarian development issues and add to the insights to be gleaned from a political economy of development

the economic theory of agrarian institutions introduction alternative approaches to the theory of institutions in economic development pranab bardhan rational peasants efficient institutions and a theory of rural organization methodological remarks for development economics joseph e stiglitz part 1 land and labour theories of sharecropping nirvikar singh a comparison of principal agent and bargaining solutions the case of tenancy contracts clive bell contracts with eviction in infinitely repeated principal agent relationships bhaskar dutta et al production relations in semi arid african agriculture hans binswanger et al part 2 credit and interlinked transactions rural credit markets the structure of interest rates exploitation and efficiency kaushik basu credit and agrarian class structure mukesh eswaran and ashok kotwal credit rationing tenancy productivity and the dynamics of inequality avishay braverman and joseph e stiglitz on choice among creditors and bonded labour contracts t n srinivasan some aspects of linked product and credit market contracts among risk neutral agents clive bell and t n srinivasan a note on interlinked rural economic arrangements pranab bardhan interlinkages and the pattern of competition debraj ray and kunal sengupta part 3 marketing and insurance agricultural institutions for insurance and stabilization david m newbery peasants risk aversion and the choice of marketing intermediaries and contracts a bargaining theory of equilibrium marketing contracts pinhas zusman part 4 co operatives technology and the state agricultural producer co operatives louis putterman institutional analysis of credit co operatives avishay braverman and j luis guasch agrarian structure technological innovations and the state alain de janvry et al

a theory of interlinked rural transactions this paper argues that the interlinking of labor output and credit contracts often observed in rural economies can be regarded as an attempt to improve allocative efficiency in the face of moral hazard it advances an economic explanation of the phenomenon which is rooted in the view that prevalent modes of transaction of which interlinked contracts are an example are shaped by technological considerations interlinking is shown to be an efficient economic response to unequally distributed information arising from the uncertainty which characterizes subsistence agriculture all pareto efficient allocations require a combination of wage cum output sharing with consumption credit contracts the analytical framework set up to demonstrate the results is used to examine the response of the contractual parameters to changes in i the returns to alternative occupations available to tenant laborers ii the cost of credit to the village economy and iii the riskiness of cultivation the analysis concludes that public policy to alleviate rural poverty must recognize the relationships between technological considerations and modes of transaction in the absence of a complete set of markets

labor tying in a poor agrarian economy a theoretical and empirical analysis in this paper we show how tied labor contrary to its common characterization as a feudal relic and as a symptom of economic stagnation may actually be strengthened by capitalist agricultural development we construct a simple two period theoretical model of a two tiered labor market to show how the proportional importance of voluntary labor tying contracts may increase with yield increasing improvements and with a tightening of the labor market we then provide in support of these hypotheses some general historical as well as more detailed econometric evidence from a variety of cross sectional data in rural india

on prices and economic power explaining recent changes in intersectoral relations in the indian economy two contrasting views about the relationship between agriculture and industry and in particular about the optimal level of the terms of trade between these two sectors are identified and first set in the context of the political economy of contemporary india methodological issues relating to the correct measurement of intersectoral price shifts are taken up and it is shown that these have considerable bearing on current controversies it is argued in particular that single factor explanations of the behaviour of the terms of trade lack credibility and that these have to be analysed in the context of wider issues of growth and imbalance in developing economies

efficiency and equity tradeoffs incentive compatible contracts revisited abstract while the efficiency of certain contractual choices has been well established less attention has been given to the distributional outcomes of contracting in natural resource based industries data from a case study of seed gatherers in honduras demonstrates that workers paid under a relative payment system receive an earnings premium of about 25 of which 40 cannot be explained by observed differences in worker productivity a theoretical agency model is outlined in the appendix to explain why workers under tournaments necessarily enjoy a higher return than those under piece rates implying a more skewed income distribution as suggested in the efficiency wage literature

the impact of credit on peasant productivity and differentiation in nicaragua abstract an endogenous switching regressions framework is used to structure and identify the impact of credit on small farm food production in nicaragua the results which emerge weakly support the hypothesis that credit had a positive impact on production and could be expected to reduce the pattern of structurally unbalanced growth in nicaraguan agriculture however the estimated impact is of a form which implies a process of differentiation and unequal growth in the peasant sector in the wake of the new opportunities afforded by credit

can land market reform mitigate the exclusionary aspects of rapid agro export growth abstract agro export growth has been associated with land concentration and employment instability in the wake of exclusionary agro export booms land market reform has been proposed as a way to improve peasant land access through the market developing a model of the economic competitiveness of different classes of producers this paper evaluates the likely effectiveness of land market reform while the model itself gives ambiguous answers numerical simulation identifies a large gap between market price and peasants abilty to pay for land among the components of land market reform policy progressive land taxation appears unlikely to close that competitiveness gap while farm land mortgage banks appear more likely to mitigate exclusionary aspects of growth

interlocking transactions obstacles precursors or instruments of agrarian capitalism abstract rural labor arrangements often change rapidly and in ways that prevailing theories cannot explain explicit understanding of the exercise of power in rural society sheds considerable light on how and why rural labor arrangements change in the course of economic development this paper shows how different labor tying arrangements embody exclusionary mechanisms that can serve as instruments of both labor management and social control macro political and economic conditions shape the ways in which these mechanisms operate and are in turn influenced by them viewing labor arrangements in this way helps resolve problems confronted by the prevailing theories and allows for a broader understanding of dynamic processes

choice of contracts in turkish agriculture sharecropping and fixed rent tenancy have coexisted under extremely diverse settings for centuries from labor abundant south and east asia to land abundant west africa and the americas this fact has intrigued generations of economists since adam smith marshall s lucid exposition of the productive inefficiencies of sharecropping in the principles paved the way for a major effort to reconcile neoclassical theory with the reality of coexistence 1 another substantial segment of the literature condemned sharecropping as an exploitative mechanism in semifeudal societies and predicted its downfall 2 more recent theoretical treatments however hail the share contract as a simple yet ingenious arrangement that guarantees the second best outcome in environments characterized by risk input market imperfections and moral hazard 3 the intuition underlying this argument is widely accepted but has yet to yield a general explanation of the real world coexistence phenomenon nor should we expect such an explanation each country and historical episode has its unique climatic technological and institutional characteristics and different motives for the adoption of share contracts may dominate in different settings 4 it is troublesome in fact that our empirical knowledge is so thin given that our theory of agricultural contracts is so rich 5 one reason of course is that appropriate data are costly and difficult to collectfor contractual choice is stubbornly complex and is best observed at the individual agent or household level there has been empirical work but much of it has examined the well worn marshallian theme is sharecropping less efficient than self cultivation 6 our knowledge of the conditions under which different contracts are likely to arise is limited to a handful of studies on the indian subcontinent or the united states in this article i examine the determinants of contractual choice during the 1970s for samples of individual turkish landlords and tenants the data were drawn from a 1973 survey that was national in

testing the theory of tournaments an empirical analysis of broiler production broiler chickens are raised by contract growers whose rewards depend explicitly upon relative performance we use data on the performance of broiler producers facing both tournament and linear performance evaluation compensation structures to test three predictions from the theory of tournaments that changes in the level of prizes that leave prize differentials unchanged will not affect performance that in mixed tournaments more able players will choose less risky strategies and that tournament organizers will attempt to handicap players of unequal ability or reduce mixing to avoid the disincentive effects of mixed tournaments our evidence is consistent with each prediction

rent income distribution and growth in an underdeveloped agrarian economy abstract a model is constructed to examine the determination of income distribution in an underdeveloped agrarian economy such as the indian one in which both rich capitalist farmers and poor subsistence farmers rent in land from landlords it is used to analyse the growth and income distributional consequences of different kinds of institutional and technological changes the possibilities of the growth of capitalism and the impact of industrial expansion

permanent labour and land tenancy contracts in agrarian economies an integrated analysis extending the existing models of land and labour contracts this study attempts to build a general model of long term agrarian contracts the model implies that where tenancy is an available option the fixed wage permanent labour contract will not be chosen if it is chosen under institutional constraints on tenancy contracts resulting resource allocations will be inefficient empirical relevance of the model is tested on data from the philippines

money and credit in the monetary transmission process the title of this session asks about the roles of money or credit in the transmission of monetary and real shocks our answer repeated in different forms for more than two decades is that the analysis of the transmission process is incomplete without both the money and credit markets and their interaction for many years economists ignored the role of the credit markets recently there has been some change concerns about financial fragility banking failures debt default and loan rationing focussed attention on credit markets reexamination of experience during the early 1930 s ben bernanke 1983 raises an issue about whether credit market shocks operated 1 as an independent or exogenous impulse supplementing and reinforcing the monetary decline or 2 as part of the interaction of credit money and other financial markets

rural labor legislation and permanent agricultural employment in northeastern brazil abstract permanent annual or longer term agricultural employment declined relative to temporary daily weekly or seasonal employment during the 1960s in a sugar cane producing region in northeastern brazil but increased rapidly during the 1970s predictions from economic theory are combined with observations about the economic forces at work during the period to argue that in the absence of government intervention permanent employment would likely have risen during both decades the argument renders the introduction of the brazilian rural labor statute rls of 1963 a strong candidate explanation for the decline of permanent employment in the 1960s the rls s employment stability provision which required employers to make severance payments to workers with at least one year tenure dismissed without just cause not only increased the expected cost of permanent contracts but also changed the very nature of permanent employment prior to the legislation employers induced permanent workers to be subject to them by giving them premium wage and benefits packages and threatening to dismiss them if caught shirking in subjection severance pay provisions made such threats incredible the elimination of farmers ability to derive subjection benefits from permanent employees reduced even further the incentive to hire workers under permanent contracts

agro export production and peasant land access examining the dynamic between adoption and accumulation abstract new technologies and export opportunities have often contributed to dualistic agrarian structure and intense social conflict in latin american a switching regression model developed in this paper explicitly links export adoption and land accumulation patterns controlling for pre existing differentiation processes applied to survey data gathered from peasant households in guatemala the model provides evidence of equitable structural change induced by a recent export boom in vegetable crops however the optimism of these results is tempered by consideration of the unfavorable longer term market dynamics confronting small scale producers

brazil s agrarian structure changes from 1970 through 1980 abstract structural patterns that accompany the growth and modernization of brazil s agrarian economy are identified despite increasing land concentration a rather large and disproportionate economic contribution of sizable numbers of very small farms is documented as is an enhanced vitality of larger farms meanwhile large quantities of unused agricultural land remain on many medium sized and large farms the expected inverse relationship between farm size and various measures of production per land unit is validated and reasons for the inverse relationship are deduced production is so large on small farms because their intensity of resource use overwhelms the facts that yields are greater and higher valued export crops are more usually found on large farms that capitalized intermediate and large farms seem destined to play a larger role in future production in brazil is argued but it is doubtful that the small farm and by implication the peasantry will disappear in the foreseeable future

capitalism and kinship do institutions matter in the labor market this study examines the determination of employment and pay on capitalist and kinship vessels in the new england fishing industry capitalist vessels resemble standard competitive firms in the way that employment and pay respond to changing market conditions kinship vessels operate under work guarantees and income sharing rules these differences in institutional rules lead to different patterns of income employment growth and labor adjustment the study shows how an understanding of the institutional structure of labor markets can contribute to the design of public policies to facilitate adjustment to change and to promote industrial growth

the credit view financial announcements and interesr rate responses abstract proponents of the credit view have argued that aggregate commercial bank lending decisions have strong macro economic effects this view is in contrast to the monetarist view that it is sufficient to consider the liability side of the banking sector s balance sheet in analyzing the economic outlook in this paper we examine whether or not financial markets reacted to unexpected changes in aggregate commercial bank lending during much of the 1980s in contrast to the implications of the credit view no evidence of a significant reaction to such shocks is uncovered however there is evidence to suggest that unexpected commercial paper activity is important to financial markets but the sign of the association is the opposite of that predicted by the credit view

work incentives hierarchy and internal labor markets this paper argues that contracts with payment based on a ranking of employee performance can provide performance incentives even under asymmetric information that prevents payment based on individual performance only being enforceable such contracts also fit with five features of labor markets that have aroused considerable interest 1 hierarchical wage structures 2 internal promotion 3 wage rates that rise with seniority and experience more than productivity 4 the variance of earnings increasing with experience and 5 wage rates attached to jobs rather than individuals with differentials set by administrative procedures rather than by reference to external market wages

connective power solar electrification and social change in kenya summary market based rural electrification with solar energy is increasingly common in developing countries this article revolves around three main claims about solar electrification in kenya s unsubsidized market 1 the benefits of solar electrification are captured primarily by the rural middle class 2 solar electricity plays a modest role in supporting economically productive and education related activities but connective applications such as television radio and cellular telephone charging often receive a higher priority 3 solar electrification is more closely tied to increased television use the expansion of markets more rural urban communication and other processes that increase rural urban connectivity than to poverty alleviation sustainable development or the appropriate technology movement

limited liability contracts between principal and agent abstract the optimal strategy of the principal is examined in an environment where there are ex post limitations on the maximum penalty that can be imposed on a riskneutral agent contrary to the case in which such limitations are not imposed it is in the principal s interest to deliberately forego the opportunity to induce socially efficient behavior and to instead design a contract that induces the agent to realize an efficient outcome only in the most productive state of nature and perhaps in certain very unproductive states the properties of the contract are examined in detail

credit and sharecropping in agrarian societies this paper considers a model of linkage between land labor and credit transactions in the context of sharecropping the paper s objectives are a to derive and characterize the equilibrium in a model of a land scarce labour abundant economy under sharecropping given an infinitely elastic supply of identical sharecroppers at a reservation utility and b to demonstrate that in an imperfect market a landlord may offer credit to his tenant sometimes even at a subsidized rate of interest without necessarily insisting that the sharecropper borrow only from him precluding an involuntary linkage between credit and land transations it has been demonstrated that regardless of the presence or absence of linkage or any other control by the landlord as long as he can vary the size of the plot given to a tenant and there are enough potential tenants in equilibrium contracts a tenants utility under sharecropping will be the same as that which he could have obtained as a full time wage laborer this result implies that policies other than land reform will not affect the welfare of tenants

kinship ties social networks and segmented labor markets evidence from the construction sector in egypt abstract this paper tests for rationing of entry into craft occupations in the construction labor market in egypt and investigates whether entry is rationed according to regional origin and access to kinship and other social networks i use a modified version of roy s model of occupational choice which allows for the existence of costs of entry into craft occupations data from a 1988 survey of construction workers are used to estimate the model and test for rationing the results confirm the existence of rationing according to a worker s regional background but are inconclusive with respect to kinship ties and social networks

attached farm labor limited horizons and servility abstract two facets of attached farm labor arrangements the servility often required of attached laborers and employers interest in maintaining such workers limited horizons are described and incorporated into an otherwise standard model of attached and temporary agricultural employment substantially modifying the model s predictions the dependence of workers preferences on reference group behavior which underlies employers interest in limiting horizons may enable employers to drive even freely mobile workers wellbeing below competitive levels may imply that abolishing servility arrangements would benefit all workers gives rise to multiple equilibria in community layout and culture and sheds light on some characteristics of agrarian revolts

exclusionary labour arrangements interpreting evidence on employment trends in rural java intense controversy surrounds the interpretation of national survey and census data on employment trends in rural java the analysis of exclusionary labour arrangements developed in this paper helps resolve this controversy it also sheds light on the mechanisms that underlie different labour arrangements and the ways in which these mechanisms are connected with wider political and economic forces

economic returns to social power merchants finance and interlinkage in the grain markets of bangladesh abstract the paper describes contrasting forms of interlinked transaction and the exchange regimes in which they are situated in two rural areas of bangladesh a fast growing green revolution area and a slow growing backward area some interlinkages fix output and finance prices for producers others establish personalized monopsony in trade the implication for rates of return and vulnerability of the different forms of interlinked transaction are explored perverse risk transfer from less to more vulnerable parties is found particularly when interlinkages are combined the market structures described appear to emerge not from government intervention but from the uneven distribution of local power and are thus unlikely to be improved by structural adjustment reforms or by price focused policies

credit income and causality a contemporary co integration analysis abstract in this study we investigate the macroeconomic fundamental issue of causal relationship between credit and money income for the us postwar economy along the lines of the credit view theorists in the long run we provide significant evidence that credit causes income further we support the view that there is a rather weak causality effect from income to credit in the long run indeed we identified that there is a dynamic causality effect in the short run from income changes to credit ones a contemporary co integration analysis is applied using the maximum likelihood method additionally considering the formulated var a stability analysis of the equivalent first order dynamic system has been performed finally dynamic forecasts from the corresponding ecvar error correction var are obtained in order to verify the validity of the co integration vector used it may be useful to mention that we have not met in the relevant literature the type of forecasting presented here

wages and involuntary unemployment in the slack season of a village economy abstract we model slack season wages in a village economy in the presence of involuntary unemployment our model draws its inspiration from sociological notions of everyday peasant resistance in particular labourers can react to employers who pay low slack wages by refusing to work for them in the relatively tight peak season such refusals however are not automatic and are modelled endogenously a continuum of equilibrium wage configurations is obtained these configurations barring one involve wages exceeding reservation wages despite the presence of involuntary unemployment several qualitative observations follow these are examined with respect to available empirical data in particular the village survey of palanpur

sharecropping and the interlinking of agrarian markets one of the often noted features of less developed agrarian economies is the existence of interlinkages among the land labor credit and product markets the landlord is often the supplier of credit he frequently purchases and markets the output of the tenant farmers and often sells raw materials and even consumption goods to his tenant farmers how can this phenomenon be explained what are the welfare consequences of attempts to restrict these practices which often seem to constitute restraints on free trade these are the questions to which this paper is addressed a general set of arguments applicable to both competitive and noncompetitive environments are presented to situations where all the terms of the contract are determined in an optimal way as well as to situations where many of the terms are specified institutionally section i examines interlinked credit and tenancy contracts section ii examines interlinked marketing and tenancy contracts section iii points out the possible interlinking between labor contracts and consumption goods markets and section iv presents the different equilibrium frameworks discussed in the paper such as monopoly monopsony competition and equilibria with surplus labor

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

change in state power international conditions and peasant producers the case of kenya arguments for food self sufficiency at the level of small scale farms invariably refer to the need for national self sufficiency this article shows that state inspired attempts to impose self sufficiency upon specialised middle peasant producers in kenya have had the effect of reducing the supply of marketed food and increasing food imports a change in the character of presidential power has also inhibited food production by large scale farms and this together with imported price shocks has reduced the supply of food for commercialised peasants who produce for international markets only very specific political conditions make it possible for international and internal circuits of capital and exchange to be harmonised through the power of a nation state

targeting child labor in debt bondage despite recent multilateral efforts to single out child labor in debt bondage as one of the worst forms of child labor several important questions have yet to be addressed how pervasive is the phenomenon are there systematic correlations between the incidence of children in debt bondage and the economic legislative and financial development indicators of the economy how does an understanding of these correlates affect the way national and international policy measures aimed at targeting this form of child labor are perceived this article addresses each of these questions the empirical findings suggest strong correlation between the likelihood of the incidence of child labor in debt bondage with the stage of development of an economy the stage of financial development and enforcement of core labor rights building on this evidence the article presents a theoretical model that highlights the drawbacks and merits of a number of policies aimed at putting checks on child labor in debt bondage