Abstract

This article examines determinants of the agrarian structure in
transition economies with an emphasis on the role of rural
households’ human capital. Land reform and enterprise restructuring
have resulted in a broad range of farm types, such as cooperatives,
partnerships, individual farms and combinations of these. In the
theoretical model the fact that household resources are allocated to
different organization modes is attributed to the utility maximization
strategy of heterogeneous agents deriving income from uncertain
sources in the face of incomplete factor markets. The empirical
results from a multinomial logit model estimated with data from a
two-year nationwide survey of Romanian rural households support
the hypothesis that the current agrarian structure is importantly
affected by the human capital characteristics of the households and
the economic risks they face.