Trends in family labour, hired labour and contract work on French and Swiss crop farms: The role of agricultural policies

The objective of this article is to analyse the trends in on-farm labour use, including own family labour, hired labour and contract work, and to assess the factors driving their evolution in France and in Switzerland during 1990-2007. A particular attention is given to agricultural policies, namely the level and type of support. Results indicate that crop area payments discourage the different labour demands in both countries, while environment and investment payments favour contract and hired labour in France. Contract labour and family labour are substitute and hired labour and family labour are complement in France.farm labour, hired labour, contract work, policies, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

Discrete choice models of family labour supply

Choice Theory;Labour Supply

Family labour supply and taxes in Ireland

Taxation;Labour Supply

Resource Use Efficiency of Millet/Cowpea Intercropping in Niger State, Nigeria

The study examined the profitability and resources-use efficiency of millet/cowpea mixed farmers production in Niger state Nigeria. The primary data for the study was obtained using structured questionnaire administered to 80 randomly sampled farmers in Kotangora Local Government Area of Niger State. Farm budgeting technique and exponential production function were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the estimated gross margin, net farm income, gross ratio, operating ratio and returns on investment are N57,542.42 per hectare, N54,240.40 per hectare, 0.37, 0.31 and 2.15. The regression result shows that seed and family labour were statistically significant at 1% level of probability, while farm size and hired labour were statistically significant at 5% level of probability. The allocative efficiency results show that seeds, family labour and agrochemicals were under-utilized. Farm size and hired labour were over-utilized. Efficiency and productivity could be improved if the farmers use more seed, family labour, agrochemicals, less of hired labour and land.Crop Production/Industries,

Productivity of hired and family labour and determinants of technical inefficiency in Ghana's fish farms

This paper examines the productivity of hired and family labour and determinants of technical inefficiency of fish farms in Ghana. A modified Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production function which accounts for zero usage of family and hired labour is employed on cross-sectional data of 150 farmers collected in 2007. The results reveal that family labour, hired labour, feed, seed, land, other cost and extension visit have reasserting influence on fish farm production. Findings also show that family and hired labour used for fish farming production in Ghana may be equally productive. The combined effects of operational and farm specific factors (age, experience, land, gender, pond type and education) influence technical inefficiency although individual effects of some variables may not be significant. Mean technical efficiency is estimated to be 79 percent. Given the present state of technology and input level, the possibility of enhancing production can be achieved by reducing technical inefficiency by 21 percent through adoption of practices of the best fish farm. --Ghana,fish farms,technical inefficiency,hired and family labour,stochastic frontier.

Calculating shadow wages for family labour in agriculture : An analysis for Spanish citrus fruit farms

This paper deals with the calculation of shadow wages for family labour in agriculture. Using the existence of a duality between input distance and cost functions, we use the former to derive individual labour shadow prices for a sample of Spanish citrus fruit producers. Our results show that the average shadow price representing the opportunity cost of family labour employed onfarm, is lower than the average market wage rate paid for hired labour. We relate this finding to a strategy of outsourcing of many growing tasks that is currently pursued by farmers to overcome the problems posed by a suboptimal farm size.shadow prices, duality, distance functions, on-farm labour opportunity cost, outsourcing

A Study of Time and Labour Use on Irish Suckler Beef Farms

End of project reportLabour is one of the four factors of production and an increasingly costly and scarce input on farms. The attractiveness of non-farming employment, the nature of farm work and the price received for farm outputs are resulting in falling levels of hired and family labour

Why Family Farms Are Increasingly Using Wage Labour?

In many developed countries, the share of wage employment out of the total agricultural labour force has been increasing for the last ten years. Using data from French agricultural censuses, we present an analysis of the factors that influence households' decisions about whether to work on the family farm or to work outside, and about the use of wage labour. Studying how the effects of these factors have varied between 1988 and 2000 enables us to highlight the different mechanisms that have led to an increase in permanent wage employment during that period. In particular, we show that family labour and permanent wage labour have become nearly equivalent in 2000, whereas that was not the case in 1988.agricultural employees, farms, family labour, Labor and Human Capital, C34, C35, J22, J43,

Perinatal Family Labour Supply: Historical Trends and the Modern Experience

The predominant perspective on perinatal family labour supply in the theoretical and empirical economics literature is that careers and children are simultaneous choices, so conditioning on the prenatal career ambitions of individuals, and particularly women, the event of a birth has little or no effect on labour market behaviour. There are, of course, many reasons to believe that this “allor- nothing” view, rooted in assumptions of perfect foresight, overlooks significant labour market effects of children and that due to various trends, including rising correlation in husband-wife earnings, these effects may becoming increasingly important. Using historical Canadian Census data and rich longitudinal microdata, I use nonparametric techniques to identify discontinuities in employment probabilities, hours of work and wage outcomes of parents, and particularly dualcareer couples, in the months just before and after a first birth. The evidence indicates that although the vast majority of new mothers and fathers who were employed prior to birth, maintain that employment, a non-trivial percentage of women (roughly 20%) appear to give up employment entirely after a birth and roughly half of them will not have returned to work 5 years later. More importantly, the percentage that drop out of the labour force is increasing and has been for at least the past two decades. This decrease is particularly evident among more educated and older women. Further, among new mothers and fathers who maintain their employment through the perinatal period, there is evidence of other types of labour supply adjustments including significant decreases (mothers) and increases (fathers) in both usual monthly hours of work and hourly wages. There is also evidence of increased probabilities of job changing in the year just before and after the birth for fathers, but not for mothers. Together these findings provide a much richer perspective on how today’s dual-career families balance work and child rearing. In terms of its policy relevance, the findings emphasize the importance of measures that support parents in balancing work and family time, as opposed to measures that are focused on enabling parents, and particularly women, to maintain uninterrupted careers while raising children.

Added worker effect revisited through the French working time reduction experiment

This paper studies the impact of the French working time reduction experiment on the family labour supply. I expanded on the conventional added worker effect in order to analyse successively the effect of the ''35 hours'' on two dimensions of the spouse's labour supply: the probability to participate in the labour market and the working hours. Econometric tests are carried out on 10 000 couples drawn from the French EMPLOI survey of the INSEE. In the first estimation using Heckman's and Cogan's fixed costs frameworks, I found that working time reduction reduces the spouse's working hours when he (she) works. In the second one, using a multivariate probit analysis, I found that it increases the spouse's probability to join the labour force when he (she) was outside of the labour market in the previous period.added worker effect; family labour supply; fixed costs; multivariate probit; simultaneous equations; Working time reduction