Labor Misallocation and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War
劳动力错配与大规模动员：第一次世界大战期间的俄国农业
We exploit a quasi-natural experiment of military draftees in Russia during World War I to examine the effects of a massive, negative labor shock on agricultural production. Employing a novel district-level panel data set, we find that mass mobilization produces a dramatic decrease in cultivated area. Surprisingly, farms with communal land tenure exhibit greater resilience to the labor shock than private farms. The resilience stems from peasants reallocating labor in favor…