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Abstract
Within many African households, agricultural production is simultaneously carried
out on many plots controlled by different members of the household. Detailed plot-level
agronomic data from Burkina Faso provides striking evidence of inefficiencies in the
allocation of factors of production across the plots controlled by different members of the
household. Production function estimates imply that the value of household output could
be increased by 10 to 20 percent by reallocating currently-used factors of production
across plots. This finding contradicts standard models of agricultural households. A
richer model of behavior, which recognizes that the individuals who comprise a
household compete as well as cooperate, has important implications for the structure of
agricultural production and for the design of agricultural policy.