Labor Misallocation and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War
利用一战期间俄罗斯征兵作为准自然实验，研究发现大规模劳动力冲击导致耕地面积大幅减少，但公社制农场比私人农场更具韧性，原因在于农民重新配置劳动力以利用公社的非市场土地获取和社会保险。
We exploit a quasi-natural experiment of military draftees in Russia during World War I to examine the effects of a massive, negative labor shock on agricultural production. Employing a novel district-level panel data set, we find that mass mobilization produces a dramatic decrease in cultivated area. Surprisingly, farms with communal land tenure exhibit greater resilience to the labor shock than private farms. The resilience stems from peasants reallocating labor in favor of the commune because of the increased attractiveness of its nonmarket access to land and social insurance. Our results support an institutional explanation of factor misallocation in agriculture.