Using Shadow Wages to Estimate Labor Supply of Agricultural Households

Abstract With few exceptions, most studies of the labor demand and supply decisions of agricultural households in developing countries have relied on the empirical advantages of separability. Given the questionable nature of some of the assumptions sufficient for separability, I apply a recent methodology that accounts for the simultaneity between the production and consumption decisions of a farm household. Using data from rural India, direct estimates of the marginal productivities (shadow wages) of family male and female labor are derived from a Cobb‐Douglas agricultural production function. The estimated shadow wages and income are then used as regressors in a structural model of labor supply.