Wages in Kind and Economic Development―Their Impacts on Labor Supply and Food Security of Rural Households in Developing Countries―
研究了实物工资在发展中国家农村家庭粮食安全中的作用，通过历史记录和理论模型，发现当工人面临贫困和粮食市场不完善时，实物工资合同能激励更多劳动供给，并用缅甸农村数据验证了这一预测。
This paper investigates the function of various modes of wage payment, focusing on the role of inkind wages in enhancing household food security in developing countries. It first demonstrates the importance of inkind wage payment in the initial phase of eco nomic development through compiling historical records from Asian countries including prewar Japan and colonial India. This section is followed by a survey of theoretical explanations of inkind wages. As a relatively unexplored explanation, this paper then develops a theoretical model of labor supply to different labor contracts, incorporating considerations of food security as the main explanation for inkind wages. The theoret ical model predicts that when food security considerations are important for workers, possibly due to poverty and thin food markets, they work more under a contract with wages paid in kind (food) than under a contract with wages paid in cash. This predic tion is supported by empirical evidence from rural Myanmar. Estimation results of the reducedform determinants of labor supply show that workers supply more labor to a job whose wages are paid in kind when the share of staple food in workers’ budget is higher and the farmland on which they produce food themselves is smaller. JEL classification codes : J33, Q12, O12. ∗The author is grateful to Hideshi Itoh, Sonia Laszlo, Ryo Kambayashi, Stefan Klonner, Yasu Sawada, Kei Kajisa, Akio Takahashi, Yutaka Arimoto, Tomohiro Machikita, and other seminar participants at the North east Universities Development Consortium Conference, the Japanese Economic Association Annual Meeting, the Japan Agricultural Economics Association General Meeting, the microeconomics research seminar at the University of Tokyo, the HiStat conference at Hitotsubashi University, and the contract theory workshop at Hitotsubashi University for useful comments on earlier versions of this paper. †Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 21 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 1868603 Japan. Phone: 81425808363; Fax.: 81425808333. Email: kurosaki@ier.hitu.ac.jp.