A natural affinity exists between public choice and the study of peasant society. Public choice can be defined as the study of nonmarket economics and the extension of the methodology of microeconomics to nonmarket settings. Since so much of peasant studies is concerned with the analysis and design of institutions other than markets, public choice can bridge the chasm between market economists applying rational models of individual decisionmaking to markets and the social scientists who have assumed that the assumptions of economics about individual decisionmaking and the allocation of scarce resources were not applicable to their study of rural institutions.

This paper discusses two aspects of public-choice theories that illuminate patterns of rural relations: first, the free-rider problem in collective action; and, second, the problem of obtaining information about quality or effort in exchanges. The anonymity of the ideal market would make it impossible for an individual to evaluate the quality of some products or some work efforts. Such problems of evaluating quality help to explain why some exchanges have personalized relations and why some crops have more personal-