EH.Net Abstracts in Economic History

                ABSTRACTS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
                     (c) 2006 EH.Net
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Name: Steven Nafziger
Email: steven.nafziger at yale.edu
Institution: Yale University

Co-author: none

Title: Land Communes and Factor Market Imperfections: Micro-Evidence 
from Late 19th-Century Russia

Internet Address of abstracted work:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~sen8/ImperfectionsPaper_JobMarketPacket2005.pdf

By mail:
977 State St. #3C
New Haven, CT 06511

Language: English

Abstract:
Russian economic growth in the late 19th century took place within an 
institutional context that was seemingly antithetical to economic 
development. How did this occur? Alexander Gerschenkron and other 
scholars have argued that the peasant land commune's system of 
collective property rights and control over household resource 
decisions introduced frictions into factor markets that limited the 
supply of labor out of agriculture and into industry. I employ newly 
collected archival data from a survey of rural Russia households in 
the 1890s to evaluate this argument. Households responded to labor 
endowment shocks and distortions imposed by the communal regime 
through transactions in both land and labor markets. The flexibility 
of household labor allocations implies that communal limitations on 
labor mobility were less restrictive than has commonly been assumed. 
Late 19th-century Russian growth was possible, in part, because 
communes did little to impede the allocation of labor across the 
economy.

Bibliography: Nafziger, Steven. "Land Communes and Factor Market 
Imperfections: Micro-Evidence from Late 19th-Century Russia." Yale 
University, working paper. 2006.

Subject: D
Geographical Area: 4
Country/Region: Russia
Time Period: 7

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