Can labor market imperfections explain changes in the inverse farm size-productivity relationship? Longitudinal evidence from rural India

Klaus Deininger, Songqing Jin, Yanyan Liu () and Sudhir Singh

No 1538, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: To understand whether and how inverse relationship between farm size and productivity changes when labor market performance improves, we use large national farm panel from India covering a quarter-century (1982, 1999, 2008) to show that the inverserelationship weakened significantly over time, despite an increase in the dispersion of farm sizes. A key reason was the substitution of capital for labor in response to nonagricultural labor demand. In addition, family labor wasmore efficient than hired labor in the 1982–1999 period, but not during the 1999–2008period.In line with labor market imperfections as a key factor, separability of labor supply and demand decisions cannot be rejected in the second period,except in villages with very low nonagricultural labor demand.

Keywords: farm structure; labour market; labour; markets; productivity; agricultural development; farm size; India; Southern Asia; Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-eff
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10568/146420

Related works:
Journal Article: Can Labor-Market Imperfections Explain Changes in the Inverse Farm Size–Productivity Relationship? Longitudinal Evidence from Rural India (2018)
Working Paper: Can labor market imperfections explain changes in the inverse farm size?productivity relationship ? longitudinal evidence from rural India (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1538

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