Parametric and Semiparametric Modeling of the Off‐Farm Labor Supply of Agrarian Households in Transition Bulgaria
评估转型期保加利亚农业家庭的非农劳动供给，发现五年后其模式与发达市场经济体相似，教育和工作经验促进非农劳动，而社会福利项目显著减少非农工作。
Abstract The reaction of labor marketsto economic reforms is an important indicator of the progress of transition. Because of diminished government support and the breakup of state and collective enterprises, labor market adjustments in the transition economies have been particularly severe in the agricultural sector. Thisarticle evaluatesthe off‐farm labor market for a sample of agrarian households in transition Bulgaria. We give particular attention to the distributional assumptions that underlie standard approaches to the evaluation of labor supply. A variety of specification tests are considered and support for standard maximum likelihood estimates which rely on normality as a maintained hypothesis is mixed. Alternative semiparametric (distribution‐free) estimators are also considered. The empirical results indicate that, five years after the initiation of the transition, off‐farm labor supply patterns for Bulgarian agricultural households are similar to what is commonly observed in developed market economies. Labor supply is positively affected by factors such as education and work experience which are hypothesized to increase off‐farm wages. Social benefit programs providing monetary or in‐kind support payments are shown to significantly decrease off‐farm work.