Governing of labor supply in Bulgarian farms - modes, factors, post-transition evolution
Hrabrin Bachev ()
MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Abstract:
The goal of this article is to identify contemporary modes and factors of labor supply in Bulgarian farms. Interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics methodology is incorporated, and an analysis is made of new representative micro data collected from the managers of farms of different types and locations. There has been enormous development in labor supply governance in Bulgarian farms during the last two decades. Permanent employment is a major form of labor supply in farms, followed by seasonal and part-time employment. Owners and family members account for the largest share of the total workforce. Different forms are used (high recurrence of contracts with the same person, output-based compensation, use of service supply or input contracts, etc.) to reduce transaction costs of labor and overall governance of farms. The reasons for using employment contracts and the importance of different labor supply and governance modes, intensity of transactions, types of partners, and kinds of remuneration vary considerably depending on juridical type, size, specialization, and locations of holdings. The most important problems in hiring labor are the lack of labor in the labor market, the high price of hired labor, requirement to pay social payments, pay-holidays, etc., big turnover of workers, high costs for adapting official labor standards, high costs for controlling of hired labor (cheating, stealing, etc.), high costs for negotiating conditions of employment, high costs to find good workers, low qualification of hired labor, advance age of hired labor, requirement for signing a written contract, and insufficient initiatives of workers. For a significant number of Bulgarian farms, the costs for finding needed labor, and the amount of costs for managing the hired labor and workers in the farm are factors strongly restricting the development of their enterprise. The latter is particularly important for a good proportion of major commercial farms like cooperatives, physical persons, and corporations, to a lesser extent for sole traders. Other critical factors strongly restricting development of Bulgarian farms at present stage of development are: legislation and regulation environment in the country and sector, the amount of costs for finding needed lands and natural resources, amount of costs for finding needed short-term and long-term assets, amount of costs for finding needed finance for the farms, amount of costs for finding needed innovations, amount of costs for marketing of output, amount of costs for registration, certification, etc., existence of informal and gray sector in agriculture, and socio-economic situation in the region and in the country.
Keywords: governance; labor supply; modes; costs; new institutional economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J0 L2 Q12 Q13 Q15 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-tra
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:125325
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