Attached farm labor, limited horizons and servility
分析附庸农业劳动力安排的两个特征:劳工的奴性及雇主维持其有限视野的动机,并将其纳入标准模型,揭示这些因素如何改变就业预测、影响工人福利、导致多重均衡,并解释农业起义的某些特征。
Two facets of attached farm labor arrangements — the ‘servility’ often required of attached laborers, and employers' interest in maintaining such workers' ‘limited horizons’ — are described and incorporated into an otherwise standard model of attached and temporary agricultural employment, substantially modifying the model's predictions. The dependence of workers' preferences on reference group behavior (which underlies employers' interest in limiting horizons) may enable employers to drive even freely mobile workers' wellbeing below competitive levels, may imply that abolishing servility arrangements would benefit all workers, gives rise to multiple equilibria in community layout and culture, and sheds light on some characteristics of agrarian revolts.