Josephson, A., J.D. Michler, and A. Orr. "An industrious revolution? Changes in the household economy in rural Bangladesh."

Changes in the household economy lie at the heart of the "agricultural transformation". However, the mechanics of this transformation at the micro-level are poorly understood. Investigating this in the neoclassical framework allows us to ask the question: what changes within rural households are needed for this transformation to succeed, and how do men and women manage this transformation? The purpose of this essay is to apply the neoclassical macroeconomic framework of a multisector economy to classical questions of distribution, accumulation, and growth. We propose the the idea of an "industrious revolution" as way to frame many of the concepts discussed in the paper, particularly changes in the rural household economy. Following Hymer and Resnick (1969) we develop a theoretical framework for the industrious revolution. We then searching for answers to a classical questions at the microeconomic or household level, using survey data from rural Bangladesh from 1988 and 2000.