IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cfr/cefirw/w0196.html

Labor Surplus and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Castaneda Dower

    (New Economic School)

  • Andrei Markevich

    (New Economic School and Department of Economics, University of Warwick)

Abstract

We use mass mobilization for World War I as an exogenous source of variation in the labor force to test the extent of agricultural surplus in one of the most quintessential examples of labor surplus, late imperial Russia. We construct district-level panel data describing agricultural production in the Russian Empire before and during the World War I. We show that districts that experienced greater mass mobilization responded by decreasing area under crops. We next demonstrate the differential effects of mobilization for commune and private farm production, peak and slack season production and cereals and animal husbandry production. Taken together, these results suggest that peasants responded to mass mobilization in a dramatic way. We estimate the upper bound of labor surplus in the agricultural sector to be significantly lower than previous estimates; however, our estimate is conditional on this peculiar pattern of labor removal.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Castaneda Dower & Andrei Markevich, 2013. "Labor Surplus and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War," Working Papers w0196, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
    • Handle: RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0196
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cefir.ru/papers/WP196.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daron Acemoglu & David H. Autor & David Lyle, 2004. "Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Midcentury," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 497-551, June.
    2. Chernina, Eugenia & Castañeda Dower, Paul & Markevich, Andrei, 2014. "Property rights, land liquidity, and internal migration," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 191-215.
    3. Nafziger, Steven, 2010. "Peasant communes and factor markets in late nineteenth-century Russia," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 381-402, October.
    4. Mark R. Rosenzweig & Andrew D. Foster, 2010. "Is There Surplus Labor in Rural India?," Working Papers 991, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    5. Gregory, Paul R., 1980. "Grain marketings and peasant consumption, Russia, 1885-1913," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 135-164, April.
    6. Markevich, Andrei & Harrison, Mark, 2011. "Great War, Civil War, and Recovery: Russia's National Income, 1913 to 1928," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(3), pages 672-703, September.
    7. Basu, Kaushik, 1992. "The broth and the cooks: A theory of surplus labor," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 109-117, January.
    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. Paul Castañeda Dower & Andrei Markevich, 2018. "Labor Misallocation and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(2), pages 245-259, May.
    2. Lindert, Peter H. & Nafziger, Steven, 2014. "Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 767-798, September.
    3. Steven Nafziger, 2016. "Communal property rights and land redistributions in Late Tsarist Russia," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(3), pages 773-800, August.
    4. Andrei Markevich & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2018. "The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(4-5), pages 1074-1117, April.
    5. Gani Aldashev & Catherine Guirkinger, 2016. "Colonization and Changing Social Structure: Kazakhstan 1896-1910," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2016-10, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Aldashev, Gani & Guirkinger, Catherine, 2017. "Colonization and changing social structure: Evidence from Kazakhstan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 413-430.
    7. Gonzalez, Felipe & Prem, Mounu & von Dessauer, Cristine, 2023. "Empowerment or Indoctrination? Women Centers Under Dictatorship," SocArXiv 64mf9, Center for Open Science.
    8. Nakashima, Kiyotaka & Ogawa, Toshiaki, 2020. "The Impacts of Strengthening Regulatory Surveillance on Bank Behavior: A Dynamic Analysis from Incomplete to Complete Enforcement of Capital Regulation in Microprudential Policy," MPRA Paper 99938, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2017. "When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps," GRAPE Working Papers 2, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    10. Kota Ogasawara & Mizuki Komura, 2022. "Consequences of war: Japan’s demographic transition and the marriage market," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 1037-1069, July.
    11. Klaus Deininger & Denys Nizalov & Sudhir K Singh, 2013. "Are mega-farms the future of global agriculture? Exploring the farm size-productivity relationship for large commercial farms in Ukraine," Discussion Papers 49, Kyiv School of Economics.
    12. Stephan E. Maurer & Andrei V. Potlogea, 2021. "Male‐biased Demand Shocks and Women's Labour Force Participation: Evidence from Large Oil Field Discoveries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(349), pages 167-188, January.
    13. Jaanika Meriküll & Maryna Tverdostup, 2020. "The Gap That Survived The Transition: The Gender Wage Gap Over Three Decades In Estonia," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 127, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    14. Meltem Daysal, N. & Orsini, C., 2012. "The Miracle Drug : Hormone Replacement Therapy and Labor Market Behavior of Middle-Aged Women," Discussion Paper 2012-026, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    15. Hong, Yan-Zhen & Chang, Hung-Hao & Dai, Yong-Wu, 2018. "Is deregulation of forest land use rights transactions associated with economic well-being and labor allocation of farm households? Empirical evidence in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 694-701.
    16. Braun, Sebastian T. & Stuhler, Jan, 2024. "The economic consequences of being widowed by war: A life-cycle perspective," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    17. Erich BATTISTIN & Sascha O. BECKER & Luca Nunziata, 2022. "More choice for men? Marriage patterns after World War II in Italy," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(3), pages 447-472, September.
    18. Gabriella Conti & Rita Ginja, 2023. "Who Benefits from Free Health Insurance?: Evidence from Mexico," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 58(1), pages 146-182.
    19. Susanne Prantl & Alexandra Spitz-Oener, 2020. "The Impact of Immigration on Competing Natives' Wages: Evidence from German Reunification," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(1), pages 79-97, March.
    20. Marianne Page, 2006. "Father's Education and Children's Human Capital: Evidence from the World War II GI Bill," Working Papers 84, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cfr:cefirw:w0196. 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: Julia Babich (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cefirru.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.