This article examines contractual labor arrangements in agrarian economies that persist as a consequence of market power on the part of landlords faced with output uncertainty. We show that a segmented labor market characterized by tied-labor contracts and involuntary unemployment in the season...

The paper offers an explanation of labour tying commonly observed in seasonally agricultural economies. Employers may either hire regular labourers in the slack season to satisfy all or most of the labour demand in the high season but have underutilised labour in the low-demand season or rely on...