Pastoralist Economic Behavior: Empirical Results from Reindeer

• Main Authors: Herders In Northern Sweden, Giiran Bostedt
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Slaughter; reindeer husbandry; saami
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.521.8625; http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/31209/1/30020381.pdf

This paper presents a model of pastoralists, as illustrated by reindeer herders, together with an analysis based on a cross-sectional data set on Swedish reindeer-herding Saami. The intrinsic utility of being an active reindeer herder plays an important role in determining supply. Results show this can lead to unconventional supply responses among pastoralists, and suggest that the probability of a backward-bending supply response increases with stock size. Further analyses confirm that reindeer herders with backward-bending supply curves have significantly larger herds than herders with conventional supply responses. Relaxed externalities from forestry would cause most herders to increase their slaughter. Key words: backward-bending supply, externalities, pastoralist, reindeer husbandry