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- Title
The Supply of Labour by Individuals to a Chinese Collective Farm: The Case of Dahe Commune.
- Authors
Burkett, John P.; Putterman, Louis
- Abstract
We provide the first econometric tests of the theory of individual labor supply in a collective farm on data at the individual level. The data are for members of five production teams in a commune in Hebei province in 1979. Our switching regressions model does not provide evidence of a significant labor supply response to differences in anticipated earnings. We argue, however, that this failure may be indirect evidence of 'under-differentiation' of payments, due to egalitarian ideology. More importantly, we provide the first econometric evidence of three significant findings about China's collective agriculture. First, our results imply that much of the labor supplied to the teams studied was discretionary, and not a response to coercive work norms. Second, and a corollary to the first result, is the implication that another significant portion of labor supplied was so coerced. Third, and finally, we find support for theoretical models which predict that labor could be oversupplied because marginal payments reflected labor's average net product rather than its marginal product.
- Subjects
CHINA; AGRICULTURAL laborers; COLLECTIVE farms; LABOR supply; LABOR costs; EQUALITY; ECONOMETRICS
- Publication
Economica, 1993, Vol 60, Issue 240, p381
- ISSN
0013-0427
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2554568