Agricultural Household Model

The agricultural household model treats the farm household as a single unit that is simultaneously a producer and a consumer, choosing how much to grow, how much labour to hire or supply, and how much to consume — decisions that ordinary firm theory and consumer theory treat as separate. Synthesised in Singh, Squire, and Strauss's 1986 World Bank volume, the model's central result is conditional: when all markets (especially for labour) function perfectly, the household's problem is recursive — it maximises farm profit first and then spends that profit like any consumer, so production decisions are independent of preferences. But when markets fail, the two sides fuse: a shadow wage replaces the market wage and household composition begins to drive production. Whether that separation holds is an empirical question, and Benjamin's 1992 Econometrica test is the canonical way to answer it.