Catherine Benjamin

Household Behavior with Imperfect Labor Markets

A household model with differential asset endowments and idiosyncratic transactions costs in accessing labor markets is developed to (1) explain membership of farm households to alternative labor regimes (sellers, employers, or self-sufficient in labor), (2) test for recursivity between production and consumption decisions selectively by labor regime, and (3) identify the determinants of differential labor productivity across labor regimes. The model is applied to a 1994 household survey of the Mexican land reform sector. (Forthcoming in the Journal of Industrial Relations)

Does Capital Market Structure Affect Farm Investment? A Comparison using French and British Farm-Level Panel Data

This article considers whether differences in the structure of agriculture credit markets in France and the United Kingdom alters the investment sensitivity to financial variables particularly cash flow. Using two panel datasets of French and British farms, three approaches are used to test the sensitivity of investment to internal finance, an inventory investment model, a fundamental q-model, and Euler equations for machinery investment. The results suggest that the contrasting capital markets structures do induce differences in overall investment sensitivity to cash flow and its pattern across both farms with varying levels of collateral and between inventory and machinery investment. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Modelling labour decisions of French agricultural households

A joint model of labour decisions for farm couples is presented. Attention is given to operator and spouse participation decisions in the off-farm labour market as well as the decision to use hired farm labour. Farm household labour choices, which include both on-farm and off-farm work decisions, and hired labour decisions, are thus modelled as a household joint process. The model is applied to a sample of French farm households. Empirical results illustrate the importance of spouse decisions on off-farm labour participation and supply function structure. They also show that operator labour and hired farm labour are complementary, but wife labour and hired farm labour are substitutable.