IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v84y2002i2p438-453.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Oligopsonistic Landlords, Segmented Labor Markets, and the Persistence of Tied-Labor Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Arnab K. Basu

Abstract

This article examines contractual labor arrangements in agrarian economies that persist as a consequence of market power on the part of landlords faced with output uncertainty. We show that a segmented labor market characterized by tied-labor contracts and involuntary unemployment in the lean season are optimal as compared to a labor hiring arrangement that guarantees full employment of labor in both seasons. Government intervention in the form of a specific subsidy targeted toward the hiring of permanent laborers may raise the welfare of all laborers while a specific subsidy directed toward the hiring of casual laborers or the institution of relief programs that absorb the rural unemployed in the lean season leads to the casual laborers in the economy being worse off. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnab K. Basu, 2002. "Oligopsonistic Landlords, Segmented Labor Markets, and the Persistence of Tied-Labor Contracts," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(2), pages 438-453.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:84:y:2002:i:2:p:438-453
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-8276.00309
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Haizi Wang & Chaowei Li & Juan Liu & Shibin Zhang, 2019. "Research on Farmers’ Willingness of Land Transfer Behavior Based on Food Security," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-17, April.
    2. Zimmermann, Laura V, 2012. "Labor Market Impacts of a Large-Scale Public Works Program: Evidence from the Indian Employment Guarantee Scheme," IZA Discussion Papers 6858, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Arnab K. Basu & Nancy H. Chau, 2004. "Exploitation of Child Labor and the Dynamics of Debt Bondage," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 209-238, June.
    4. Kartik Misra, 2019. "Is India’s Employment Guarantee Program Successfully Challenging Her Historical Inequalities?," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2019-09, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    5. Arnab Basu, 2013. "Impact of rural employment guarantee schemes on seasonal labor markets: optimum compensation and workers’ welfare," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(1), pages 1-34, March.
    6. Alma M. dela Cruz, 2007. "Contractual Arrangements in Agriculture (Northern and Central Luzon Component)," Development Economics Working Papers 22626, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    7. Misra, Kartik, 2019. "Does historical land inequality attenuate the positive impact of India’s employment guarantee program?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Lopamudra Banerjee, 2021. "Natural hazard, employment uncertainty, and the choice of labor contracts," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 227-252, April.
    9. Dela Cruz, Alma M., 2007. "Contractual Arrangements in Agriculture (Northern and Central Luzon Component)," Discussion Papers DP 2007-21, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    10. Eric Edmonds, 2007. "Institutional Influences on Human Capital Accumulation: Micro Evidence from Children Vulnerable to Bondage," Working Papers id:1109, eSocialSciences.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:84:y:2002:i:2:p:438-453. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.