The peasant between the farm and the labour market. A theoretical model of the peasant farm
Gorgoni, M.
Rivista di Economia Agraria 35(4): 682-718
1980
Document Number: 518307
The article presents a model of an Italian peasant farm with the explicit purpose of illustrating the interaction between the farm and the labour market. The model makes wide use of graphical analysis and is based on the assumption that the farmer will himself work as a paid labourer on other farms or in other sectors and/or will hire paid labour on his farm. Different hypotheses are examined for both cases, regarding salaries and limits on the availability of exchange labour. The model reveals that the prevailing conditions of the labour market crucially affect the decisions that farmers make. It also shows that, under certain circumstances, a peasant farmer's actions do not deviate from, but are dictated by much the same logic as that operating in any capitalist enterprise, or in the economic system as a whole.