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Peasant communes and factor markets in late nineteenth-century Russia

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  • Nafziger, Steven

Abstract

The peasant land commune was the emblematic institutional feature of agrarian Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. Economic historians have long blamed the commune for restricting household behavior in ways that contributed to Russia's economic "backwardness" by the late 19th century. Drawing on new household-level data collected from archival sources in Moscow province, this article provides the first microeconomic analysis of local factor markets and household behavior within the institutional context of the Russian peasant commune. The empirical evidence indicates that peasant households did have substantial flexibility when it came to allocating their land and labor holdings. In response to mortality shocks or lags in the communal adjustment of land, households engaged in land rentals and off-farm labor market transactions to improve upon suboptimal factor endowments. Although these findings do not imply that the resulting allocation of resources was fully efficient, they do illustrate how peasants made rational factor market transactions in a seemingly inhospitable institutional environment.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Explorations in Economic History.

Volume (Year): 47 (2010)
Issue (Month): 4 (October)
Pages: 381-402

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Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:47:y:2010:i:4:p:381-402

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622830

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Keywords: Russia Communal institutions Factor markets;

References

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  1. Hourwich, Isaac Aaronovich, 1892. "The Economics of the Russian Village," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number hourwich1892.
  2. A. Bedi & I. Tunali, 1996. "Testing for Market Imperfections: Participation in Land & Labor Contracts in Turkish Agriculture," Working Papers 9626, Economic Research Forum, revised Sep 1996.
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  4. Loren Brandt & Dwayne Benjamin, 2002. "Property Rights, Labour Markets, and Efficiency in a Transition Economy: The Case of Rural China," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 518, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
  5. Christopher B. Barrett & Shane M. Sherlund & Akinwumi A. Adesina, 2008. "Shadow wages, allocative inefficiency, and labor supply in smallholder agriculture," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 21-34, 01.
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  7. de Janvry, Alain & Fafchamps, Marcel & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 1991. "Peasant Household Behaviour with Missing Markets: Some Paradoxes Explained," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(409), pages 1400-417, November.
  8. Leonid Borodkin & Brigitte Granville & Carol Scott Leonard, 2007. "The Rural Urban Wage Gap in the Industrialization of Russia, 1884-1910," Working Papers 1, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
  9. Bardhan, Pranab & Udry, Christopher, 1999. "Development Microeconomics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198773719, July.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. James Fenske, 2012. "Imachi Nkwu: Trade and the Commons," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2012-19, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  2. Steven Nafziger & Peter H. Lindert, 2012. "Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution," NBER Working Papers 18383, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Jörg Baten & Mikolaj Szoltysek, 2012. "The human capital of Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe in European perspective," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2012-002, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.

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