Attached farm labor, limited horizons and servility

Abstract

Two facets of attached farm labor arrangements — the ‘servility’ often required of attached laborers, and employers' interest in maintaining such workers' ‘limited horizons’ — are described and incorporated into an otherwise standard model of attached and temporary agricultural employment, substantially modifying the model's predictions. The dependence of workers' preferences on reference group behavior (which underlies employers' interest in limiting horizons) may enable employers to drive even freely mobile workers' wellbeing below competitive levels, may imply that abolishing servility arrangements would benefit all workers, gives rise to multiple equilibria in community layout and culture, and sheds light on some characteristics of agrarian revolts.