Fallas estructurales del mercado de maíz y la lógica de la producción campesina (microeconomía del autoabasto y la autosuficiencia)

In this article we construct a micro institutional theory which explains and classifies production decisions observed amongst corn producers in Mexico. This theory is based on the transactional and informational structure of the corn market and on transaction costs affecting semi-proletarianized peasants in the city or the countryside. We integrate agronomic, cultural and microeconomic factors, analysing the informational discrimination experimented by peasants and indigenous people and their effects on the market of goods. We show that production for self-consumption may be interpreted as a symptom of the truncation of the productive and organizational development energies of the indigenous civilization.