This book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far. The model assumes that households are price-takers and is therefore recursive. The decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor. Comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies. The empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive. The book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households, marketed surplus, the demand for nonagricultural goods and services, the rural labor market, budget revenues, and foreign exchange earnings. In addition, it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition, nutritional status, health, saving, and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings. Methodological topics, primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions, along with aggregation, market interaction, uncertainty, and market imperfections are discussed. The most important methodological issues - the question of the recursive property of these models - is also discussed.

A model addressing agricultural responses to public interventions is described. The model is confined to the short run, and it allows an assessment of the policy significance of changes in five variables that are exogenous to the household. The first variable is the price of the main agricultural output, emphasizing the elasticities of both output and market surplus; the second is the wage rate for agricultural labor, focusing on the elasticities of household labor supply and demand for hired labor; the third is the size of the family labor force, which is essential for estimating shadow wage rates; the fourth is the number of dependents, in order to permit an assessment of family planning policies; and the final variable is technology. The main features of the model are the role of the labor market, household production, household consumption, and the aggregate effect of household responses. Applicaton of the model to the Muda River Valley demonstrates that it is appropriate to a number of policy isues ranging from output price intervention to technological innovaton. Specifically, the model indicates that the economic cost of rural to urban migration is small when compared to the marginal productivity of the migrant before his departure.

Types of economic deforestation models. Household and firm-level models. Regional-level models. National and macro-level models. Priority areas for future research.

The Farm Labor Problem: A Global Perspective explores the unique character of agricultural labor markets and the implications for food production, farm worker welfare and advocacy, and immigration policy. Agricultural labor markets differ from other labor markets in fundamental ways related to seasonality and uncertainty, and they evolve differently than other labor markets as economies develop. We weave economic analysis with the history of agricultural labor markets using data and real-world events. The farm labor history of California and the United States is particularly rich, so it plays a central role in the book, but the book has a global perspective ensuring its relevance to Europe and high-income Asian countries. The chapters in this book provide readers with the basics for understanding how farm labor markets work (labor in agricultural household models, farm labor supply and demand, spatial market equilibria); farm labor and immigration policy; farm labor organizing; farm employment and rural poverty; unionization and the United Farm Workers movement; the Fair Food Program as a new approach to collective bargaining; the declining immigrant farm labor supply; and what economic development in relatively low-income countries portends for the future of agriculture in the United States and other high-income countries. The book concludes with a chapter called "Robots in the Fields," which extrapolates current trends to a perhaps not-so-distant future. The Farm Labor Problem serves as both a guide to policy makers, farmworker advocates and international development organizations and as a textbook for students of agricultural economics and economics. - Describes the unique character of agricultural labor markets providing consequential insights - Contextualizes the economics of agricultural labor with a global perspective - Examines the history of farm labor, immigration, policy and collective bargaining with a view to the future

The study sites. Methods. The wealth index and its variation. Human, financial, physical and natural capital - the essets available to households. Households productive activities - the generation of cash and subsistence gross income. Exploring household strategies. Net income and poverty. Temporal changes in livelihood strategies. Modelling livelihood change. Making a difference.

Significant recent changes in the structure and composition of households make the study of the economic relationships within the household of particular interest for academics and policy-makers. In this context, Household Economic Behaviors, through its focus on theoretical and empirical chapters on a range of economic behaviors within the household, provides a new and timely viewpoint. Following the Introduction and one or two surveys which give a general background, the volume includes theoretical and empirical perspectives on allocation of available time within the household, monetary and non-monetary transfers between household members, and intra-household bargaining.

The issue of food production in Africa dominates international development thinking. In this innovative book Allan Low uses the theory of household economics to establish the link between the stagnation of African farming and the rapid development of modern market sectors in southern African economies. In the process he sheds new light on cropping patterns, technology adoption, the nature of rural-urban migration, the impact of rural development initiatives, and the success of research approaches aimed at increasing the production of small-scale African farming.