IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/amu/wpaper/1507.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Non-Farm Income on Investment in Bulgarian Family Farming

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Hertz

Abstract

This paper documents a relationship between non-farm income (primarily earnings and pensions) and agricultural outlays in Bulgaria, using the 2003 Multitopic Household Survey. The outcomes analyzed are expenditures on working capital (variable inputs such as feed, seed, and herbicides) and investment in livestock. I find that while non-farm income has no significant effect on the probability of purchasing variable inputs, it does have an effect on the amount spent if positive, with an estimated elasticity of 0.14. Non-farm income also has an effect on the number of households that purchase farm animals, with an estimated elasticity of 0.35. The use of non-farm income for farm investment is consistent with the presence of credit constraints, as is the fact that less than one per cent of farmers report outstanding debts for agricultural purposes. Yet it is also noted that many farm households take out large unsecured loans for other purposes, suggesting that a lack of demand for agricultural borrowing may also be part of the problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Hertz, 2007. "The Effect of Non-Farm Income on Investment in Bulgarian Family Farming," Working Papers 2007-15, American University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:amu:wpaper:1507
    DOI: 10.17606/m8bp-de82
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17606/m8bp-de82
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17606/m8bp-de82?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jorge Durand & William Kandel & Emilio Parrado & Douglas Massey, 1996. "International migration and development in mexican communities," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 33(2), pages 249-264, May.
    2. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1978. "The Estimation of a Simultaneous Equation Generalized Probit Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(5), pages 1193-1205, September.
    3. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Madior Fall & Thierry Magnac, 2004. "How Valuable Is On‐Farm Work to Farmers?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(1), pages 267-281, February.
    5. Holden, Stein & Shiferaw, Bekele & Pender, John, 2004. "Non-farm income, household welfare, and sustainable land management in a less-favoured area in the Ethiopian highlands," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 369-392, August.
    6. Anne Case, 2004. "Does Money Protect Health Status? Evidence from South African Pensions," NBER Chapters, in: Perspectives on the Economics of Aging, pages 287-312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Catherine Benjamin & Ayal Kimhi, 2006. "Farm work, off-farm work, and hired farm labour: estimating a discrete-choice model of French farm couples' labour decisions," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 33(2), pages 149-171, June.
    8. Martin Petrick, 2005. "Empirical measurement of credit rationing in agriculture: a methodological survey," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 33(2), pages 191-203, September.
    9. Swinnen, Johan F. M. & Gow, Hamish R., 1999. "Agricultural credit problems and policies during the transition to a market economy in Central and Eastern Europe," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 21-47, February.
    10. Stephen Devereux, 2002. "Can Social Safety Nets Reduce Chronic Poverty?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 20(5), pages 657-675, November.
    11. Michael Carter & Christopher Barrett, 2006. "The economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty: An asset-based approach," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 178-199.
    12. Martin Petrick, 2004. "A microeconometric analysis of credit rationing in the Polish farm sector," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 31(1), pages 77-101, March.
    13. Mullahy, John, 1998. "Much ado about two: reconsidering retransformation and the two-part model in health econometrics," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 247-281, June.
    14. Duan, Naihua, et al, 1984. "Choosing between the Sample-Selection Model and the Multi-part Model," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 2(3), pages 283-289, July.
    15. repec:pri:rpdevs:case_money_protect_nber is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Duncan, Greg J & Hill, Daniel H, 1985. "An Investigation of the Extent and Consequences of Measurement Error in Labor-Economic Survey Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(4), pages 508-532, October.
    17. John Mullahy, 1998. "Much Ado About Two: Reconsidering Retransformation and the Two-Part Model in Health Economics," NBER Technical Working Papers 0228, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. repec:pri:cheawb:case_money_protect_nber.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    19. de Janvry, Alain & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & Zhu, Nong, 2005. "The Role of Non-Farm Incomes in Reducing Rural Poverty and Inequality in China," CUDARE Working Papers 25043, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    20. repec:pri:cheawb:case_money_protect_nber is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Alejandra Cox Edwards & Manuelita Ureta, 2003. "International Migration, Remittances, and Schooling: Evidence from El Salvador," NBER Working Papers 9766, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. James Heckman, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    23. Bound, John & Brown, Charles & Duncan, Greg J & Rodgers, Willard L, 1994. "Evidence on the Validity of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Labor Market Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(3), pages 345-368, July.
    24. Edwards, Alejandra Cox & Ureta, Manuelita, 2003. "International migration, remittances, and schooling: evidence from El Salvador," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 429-461, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Stampini & Benjamin Davis, 2009. "Does nonagricultural labor relax farmers’ credit constraints? Evidence from longitudinal data for Vietnam," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(2), pages 177-188, March.
    2. Silva João M. C. Santos & Tenreyro Silvana & Windmeijer Frank, 2015. "Testing Competing Models for Non-negative Data with Many Zeros," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 29-46, January.
    3. Bouoiyour, Jamal & Miftah, Amal, 2014. "The effects of remittances on poverty and inequality: Evidence from rural southern Morocco," MPRA Paper 55686, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Liu, Lei & Strawderman, Robert L. & Cowen, Mark E. & Shih, Ya-Chen T., 2010. "A flexible two-part random effects model for correlated medical costs," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 110-123, January.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13287 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Petrick, Martin, 2004. "Farm investment, credit rationing, and governmentally promoted credit access in Poland: a cross-sectional analysis," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 275-294, June.
    7. Bouoiyour, Jamal & Miftah, Amal, 2014. "Les transferts de fonds réduisent-ils la pauvreté et les inégalités de revenus? Une vérification empirique à travers une enquête dans le milieu rural marocain [Remittances, Poverty and Income Inequ," MPRA Paper 57052, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Pfutze, Tobias, 2012. "Does migration promote democratization? Evidence from the Mexican transition," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 159-175.
    9. Kohei Enami & John Mullahy, 2008. "Tobit at Fifty: A Brief History of Tobin's Remarkable Estimator, of Related Empirical Methods, and of Limited Dependent Variable Econometrics in Health Economics," NBER Working Papers 14512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Lisa Pfeiffer & Alejandro López‐Feldman & J. Edward Taylor, 2009. "Is off‐farm income reforming the farm? Evidence from Mexico," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(2), pages 125-138, March.
    11. Jamal Bouoiyour & Amal Miftah, 2014. "The effects of remittances on poverty and inequality: Evidence from rural southern Morocco," Working Papers hal-01880333, HAL.
    12. Randall Akee, Devesh Kapur, 2012. "Remittances and Rashomon- Working Paper 285," Working Papers 285, Center for Global Development.
    13. Jeonghoon Ahn, 2004. "Panel Data Sample Selection Model: an Application to Employee Choice of Health Plan Type and Medical Cost Estimation," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 560, Econometric Society.
    14. de Haas, Hein, 2009. "Mobility and Human Development," MPRA Paper 19176, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Dean Yang, 2008. "International Migration, Remittances and Household Investment: Evidence from Philippine Migrants' Exchange Rate Shocks," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 591-630, April.
    16. Chloé Duvivier Duvivier & Mary-Françoise Renard & Shi Li, 2012. "Are workers close to cities paid higher non-agricultural wages in rural China?," CERDI Working papers halshs-00673698, HAL.
    17. Md.Salamun Rashidin & Sara Javed & Bin Liu & Wang Jian, 2020. "Ramifications of Households’ Nonfarm Income on Agricultural Productivity: Evidence From a Rural Area of Pakistan," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440209, January.
    18. Donald S. Kenkel & Joseph V. Terza, 2001. "The effect of physician advice on alcohol consumption: count regression with an endogenous treatment effect," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(2), pages 165-184.
    19. Rabia Arif & Theresa Thompson Chaudhry & Azam Amjad Chaudhry, 2023. "Emigration’s Heterogeneous Impact on Children’s Wellbeing in Punjab, Pakistan," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(3), pages 1251-1295, June.
    20. Galina Besstremyannaya, 2017. "Measuring income equity in the demand for healthcare with finite mixture models," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 46, pages 5-29.
    21. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & Mazzolari, Francesca, 2010. "Remittances to Latin America from migrants in the United States: Assessing the impact of amnesty programs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 323-335, March.

    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:amu:wpaper:1507. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Thomas Meal (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.american.edu/cas/economics/ .

    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.