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

Paul Castañeda Dower and Andrei Markevich

No w0238, Working Papers from Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR)

Abstract: We exploit a quasi-natural experiment of military draftees in Russia during World War I to examine the effects of a massive, negative labor shock on agricultural production. Employing a novel district-level panel dataset, we find that mass mobilization produces a dramatic decrease in cultivated area. Surprisingly, farms with communal land tenure exhibit greater resilience to the labor shock than private farms. The resilience stems from peasants reallocating labor in favor of the commune because of the increased attractiveness of its nonmarket access to land and social insurance. Our results support an institutional explanation of factor misallocation in agriculture.

Keywords: factor misallocation; agricultural production; mass mobilization; World War I; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 N44 N54 O12 O17 O20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cis and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.cefir.ru/papers/WP238.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Labor Misallocation and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War (2018)
Working Paper: Labor Misallocation and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0238

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