Background
BINSWANGER, Hans was born in 1943 in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.
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Hans BINSWANGER
Edit ProfileEducation
Certificat (Political Sciences! University Paris, 1964. Master of Science (Agriculture Sciences) Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, Switzerland, 1969. Doctor of Philosophy North. Carolina State University, 1973.
Career
Principal Economics, International Crops Research Institute, Institution Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, India, 1975-1980. Research Association, University Minnesota, 1973-1974. Association, Agriculture Development Council, New York, 1974-1980.
Chief, Agriculture Research Unit, World Bank, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America, since 1980.
Association Editor, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1983-1984.
Achievements
Works
Views
The theory of induced innovation maintains that the rate and direction of technical change are influenced by output and factor prices. By measuring biasses in a many-factor framework, I demonstrated its empirical relevance for United States agriculture. I also provided better micro-economic foundations.
Work in India concentrated on the role of risk in agricultural development. An experimental study demonstrated that almost all rural people are risk averse, but not even the poorest of the poor act according to simple or lexicographic safetybased rules. These results have been confirmed in three other countries.
However, the experimental behaviour is also inconsistent with the standard subjective expected utility theory. Such inconsistencies are common in experiments with small payoffs. In the Indian experiment, the payoffs were large in relation to the incomes of the respondents.
In a review of theories of rural labour markets and contractual arrangements, Mark Rosenzweig and I found that models of rural wage determination make assumptions inconsistent with basic assumptions in most rural contractual choice models.
We therefore attempted to build a theory of agricultural production relations (factor markets, output markets, contractual arrangements and farm size), based on consistent behavioural and material determinants. Risk, information costs, moral hazard and incentives problem
are fully incorporated. So are specific technological features of agriculture such as its spatial dispersion and the physical attributes of factors of production.
In such a system, capital and insurance markets are poorly developed, which constrains other factor markets and contractual arrangements. I have also worked on agricultural mechanisation, research resource allocation and other technical agricultural topics. Jaime Quizon and I have developed a unified approach to modelling income distribution in agriculture.
This approach is now being implemented in an econometrically estimated general equilibrium model of India’s agricultural sector.
