Abstract
The article focuses on one of the peculiarities of peasant households’ behavior that distinguishes them from firms' behavior, i.e. an inclination to reduce production output amid improvement of market conditions (a non-market behavior or inertia in the terminology of N.D. Kondratiev). The authors refer to existing literature, which explains this trend, particularly to works of Russian economists, and then they try to check the veracity of this peculiarity using Russian economic data from the early 20th century. The data was compiled ad hoc by the authors based on the official statistical publications. One of the possible methods to prove a posteriori the inertia of peasant households is to analyze peasants’ reaction to grain price fluctuations, i.e. to analyze changes in sown areas in response to changes in grain prices. Based on the analysis of track records of peasant’s grain ploughing in response to grain fluctuations in specific provinces of Russia, the authors find a significant negative correlation. Based on the comparison with the same records for landlord households, the authors infer that the negative correlation is a specific attribute of solely peasant households, thus proving the inertia hypothesis. In addition, an attempt was made to test the hypothesis about a possible change in peasant behavior after the P. A. Stolypin agrarian reform initiated in November 1906. However, the coefficients of the dummy period variable and its product with the price were statistically insignificant, that is, in the six years that have passed since the reform the behavior of peasants regarding the issue under study has not undergone significant changes. The article uses statistical and econometric methods: panel data models with fixed and random effects.
Published Version
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