Peasant Economics
Farm Households in Agrarian Development

A new edition of a popular textbook on the economics of farm households in developing countries.

Frank Ellis (Author)

9780521457118, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 November 1993

328 pages, 38 b/w illus. 20 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

' … a succinct and accessible review of an area important to both development and agricultural economics.' Journal Development Studies

This is a revised and expanded edition of a popular textbook on the economics of farm households in developing countries. The second edition retains the same building blocks designed to explore household decision-making in a social context. Key topics are efficiency, risk, time allocation, gender, agrarian contracts, farm size and technological change. For these and other topics, household economic behaviour represents the outcome of social interactions within the household, and market interactions outside the household. A new chapter on the environment combines exposition of economic tools not previously covered in the book with examination of household and community decision-making in relation to environmental resources.

Part I. Peasants, Economics, Political Economy: 1. Peasants
2. The neoclassical theory of farm production
3. Elements of peasant political economy
Part II. The Theory of the Optimising Peasant: 4. The profit-maximising peasant
5. The risk-averse peasant
6. The drudgery-averse peasant
7. The farm household peasant
8. The sharecropping peasant
Part III. Inside the Peasant Household: 9. Women in the peasant household
Part IV. Further Topics and Overview: 10. Farm size and factor productivity
11. Technical change
12. Environment
13. Peasant economics in perspective
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Tropical agriculture: practice & techniques [TVQ], Development economics & emerging economies [KCM]