Modelling labour decisions of French agricultural households

A joint model of labour decisions for farm couples is presented. Attention is given to operator and spouse participation decisions in the off-farm labour market as well as the decision to use hired farm labour. Farm household labour choices, which include both on-farm and off-farm work decisions, and hired labour decisions, are thus modelled as a household joint process. The model is applied to a sample of French farm households. Empirical results illustrate the importance of spouse decisions on off-farm labour participation and supply function structure. They also show that operator labour and hired farm labour are complementary, but wife labour and hired farm labour are substitutable.