A general equilibrium model of a poor peasant economy is developed in this paper, one where subsistence is the major concern of many and the absence of a capital market leads to the production possibilities of each agent being constrained by his current resources. A famine situation is then characterised by a wage rate that is below subsistence though the wage-rent ratio is raised. The latter explains why the Famine saw a rapid expansion in livestock production. Despite the low wage, public works facilitated the inter-temporal allocation of resources by the better-off. The government response was to reduce the wage rate so that the poor starved.
CITATION STYLE
McGregor, P. (1995). The great famine: A simple general equilibrium model. Economic and Social Review, 27(1), 55–65. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26229-8_4
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