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Subsistence Response to Market Shocks (2005)

Abstract
Micro-economic models posit that transaction costs isolate subsistence producers from output market shocks. We integrate microeconomic models of many heterogeneous households into a general-equilibrium model and show that supply on subsistence farms may respond, in apparently perverse ways, to changes in output market prices. Price shocks in markets for staple goods are transmitted to subsistence producers through interactions in factor markets. In the case presented, a decrease in the market price of maize reduces wages and land rents, stimulating maize production by subsistence households; however, real income of subsistence households falls.

Publication details
Download http://repositories.cdlib.org/are/arewp/05-004
Publisher eScholarship Repository, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UCD, University of California, Davis
Repository University of California eScholarship Repository (United States)
Keywords Agricultural households, general equilibrium models, transaction costs, agricultural supply, village economies, immiserized growth, Mexico
Type text

Cited publications (4)
De la milpa a los tortibonos: la restructuración de la política alimentaria en México (1992)
Campesinado y poder político en México (1982)
Economics and consumer behavior / Angus Deaton and John Muellbauer (1980)
La batalla en el México rural (1982)