Kinship-based resource sharing in the agrarian economy of frontier Slavonia, 1698: Evidence from an early census

Abstract

The limiting factor of grain cultivation in frontier Slavonia was the number of oxen. Having oxen in the kinship network increased grain cultivation, but having oxen simply in the neighborhood did not. Exchanging oxen was more important than exchanging human labor. The marginal productivity of oxen declines more slowly than that of workers. There were constant returns to scale in a non-intensive unsophisticated autarkic agricultural economy. Grain production could be increased only by increasing the amount of land cultivated. Land area functioned as a major determinant of fertility. There was no incentive to control fertility as long as land was abundant and there were no declining returns to marginal land. Eventually, land became scarce and more difficult to cultivate. The census of 1698 sets the economic stage for a Malthusian response to scarcity—autarkic economic units that internalized all costs of childbearing and achieved efficiencies only in the exchange of capital (oxen).