Refugee inflows, surplus farm labor, and crop marketization in rural Africa

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tsuda, Shunsuke
• 署名单位: Brown University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102805
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Refugees; Host economies; Agricultural household models; Market transaction costs; Food aid; Sub-Saharan Africa

摘要

This paper sheds light on the structure of factor and output market frictions to investigate long-term effects of refugee inflows on host farmers. Combining a canonical agricultural household model, the natural experimental setting of mass refugee inflows into Tanzania in the early 1990s, and longitudinal panel data from the host economy, I show that refugee inflows cause market-specific gains and losses. Refugee inflows tighten the off-farm labor market participation constraint, implying an increase in surplus farm labor and labor market inefficiency. On the other hand, I observe a positive impact on the transition from subsistence to crop marketization. This transition is revealed to be primarily due to a reduction in fixed transaction costs around refugee camps, not due to an increase in consumption demand by refugees. While the overall impact on agricultural labor productivity is negative, the ``surplus farm labor effect'' and the ``crop marketization effect'' act in opposite directions.