Shenggen Fan

Effects of Technological Change and Institutional Reform on Production Growth in Chinese Agriculture

Recent rapid agricultural production growth in Chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs, technological change, and institutional reform. An accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors. Institutional change, like the introduction of the household production responsibility system, has contributed to past growth in production. However, technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs, in particular land. Continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Reforms, Investment, and Poverty in Rural China*

Shenggen FanInternational Food Policy Research Institute and Institute of AgriculturalEconomics of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesLinxiu ZhangCenter for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of SciencesXiaobo ZhangInternational Food Policy Research InstituteI. IntroductionChina is one of the few countries in the developing world that has madeprogress in reducing its total number of poor over the past 25 years.

Emergence of urban poverty and inequality in China: evidence from household survey☆

Abstract This paper investigates the poverty and inequality in urban China during the period of rapid urban reforms. It shows that the incidence of urban poverty declined from 1992 to 1995, but increased from 1996 to 1998, when major urban reforms were launched. The western region has the highest concentration of urban poverty, and the income gap between the region and rest of China has been widening over time. A further decomposition analysis shows that rapid economic growth has been the major force behind reduction in urban poverty, but the poverty reduction impact would have been even greater if worsening income distribution had been avoided.

How Productive Is Infrastructure? A New Approach and Evidence from Rural India

There have been competing arguments about the effect of public infrastructure on productivity in the literature. Level-based regressions generally show a much higher return to public capital than private capital, while difference-based regressions tend to find insignificant or even negative effects. To help reconcile this debate, this paper proposes that researchers should first test for causality in their data to check for length of lagged relationships and the existence of reverse causality, as a critical step before specifying a final model and estimating procedure on the relationship between the stock of capital and productivity growth. A newly developed system GMM method of estimation is proposed for this purpose. Second, a new method of estimating the relationship between the capital stock and productivity in level form is proposed that controls for possible endogeneity problems arising from reverse causation. These methods are illustrated using a unique set of pooled time-series, cross-section data for India. It is shown that infrastructure development in India is productive with an estimated impact lying between those obtained from level-based and difference-based estimates.

Production and productivity growth in Chinese agriculture: new measurement and evidence

Abstract This study uses a more appropriate approach to measure growth in output, input and total factor productivity for Chinese agriculture. Using newly estimated production and productivity growth indexes, the impact of rural reforms have been reassessed. The conventional approach would overestimate the impact of the rural reforms on both production and productivity growth. Nevertheless, both production and productivity still grew at respectable rates during the reform period. The study also found that in order to promote the long-term production and productivity growth which is much needed to feed the Chinese population in the future, it is imperative for the government to increase its investment in agriculture as the effects of recent institutional changes have been largely exhausted.

Structural Change and Economic Growth in China

This study develops a new analytical framework to account for sources of rapid economic growth in China. The traditional Solow approach is expanded to include another source of economic growth-structural change. The empirical results show that structural change has contributed to growth significantly by reallocating resources from low-productivity sectors to high-productivity sectors. It is found that the returns to capital investment in both agricultural production and rural enterprises are much higher than those in urban sectors, indicating underinvestment in rural areas. On the other hand, labor productivity in the agricultural sector remains low, a result of the still large surpluses of labor in the sector. Therefore, further development of rural enterprises and an increase in labor flow among sectors and across regions are key to improvements in overall economic efficiency. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

Technological change, technical and allocative efficiency in Chinese agriculture: the case of rice production in Jiangsu.

This paper develops a frontier shadow cost function approach to estimate empirically the effects of technological change, technical and allocative efficiency improvement in Chinese agriculture during the reform period (1980-93). The results reveal that the first phase rural reforms (1979-84) which focused on the decentralization of the production system have had significant impact on technical efficiency but not allocative efficiency. During the second phase reforms which was supposed to focus on the liberalization of rural markets, technical efficiency improved very little and allocative efficiency has increased only slightly, however. In contrast, the rate of technological change continued to increase, although at a declining rate during the second phase reform.

Public Investment and Poverty Reduction in Tanzania: Evidence from Household Survey Data

1. Introduction Tewodaj Mogues and Samuel Benin 2. Public Spending for Agriculture in Africa: Definition, Measures and Trends Shenggen Fan and Anuja Saurkar 3. Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction Impacts of Public Investments: Assessment of Concepts and Techniques Samuel Benin, Tewodaj Mogues and Shenggen Fan 4. Agricultural Public Spending in Nigeria Tewodaj Mogues, Michael Morris, Lev Freinkman, Abimbola Adubi and Simeon Ehui 5. Public Expenditures and Agricultural Productivity Growth in Ghana Samuel Benin, Tewodaj Mogues, Godsway Cudjoe and Josee Randriamamonjy 6. Public Investment and Poverty Reduction in Tanzania: Evidence from Household Survey Data Shenggen Fan, David Nyange and Neetha Rao 7. Public Expenditure, Growth and Poverty Reduction in Rural Uganda Shenggen Fan and Xiaobo Zhang 8. The Bang for the Birr: Public Spending and Rural Welfare in Ethiopia Tewodaj Mogues 9. Investing in African Agriculture to Halve Poverty By 2015 Shenggen Fan, Michael Johnson, Anuja Saurkar and Tsitsi Makombe 10. Agricultural and Rural Public Spending in Africa: Conclusions and Implications Samuel Benin and Tewodaj Mogues

Why projections on China's future food supply and demand differ

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic assumptions, demand and supply parameters, and structures of the models used in projecting Chinas future food supply, demand, and trade. Projections from these models vary greatly, from China being almost self-sufficient in grain to becoming a net importer of 369 million metric tons of grain in 2030. The differences arrive mainly in the supply projections (the combined effect of land decline and yield growth). The paper also suggests methodology improvements needed in making future projections of Chinas grain economy, such as endogenizing government policies, and taking into account the linkage between the agricultural with the non-agricultural sectors, technical change in livestock industry, and infrastructure constraints on grain imports.

Estimating Crop-Specific Production Technologies in Chinese Agriculture: A Generalized Maximum Entropy Approach

A generalized maximum entropy approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture. Despite a modest behavioral assumption about equal marginal returns of nonland inputs among crops, this method does not require price information, which is usually distorted in a centrally planned economy such as China. A multi-output technology for Chinese agriculture is estimated and input allocations for each province are recovered simultaneously. The estimated multi-output production technology and input allocations imply that China may have greater grain production potentials than previously thought. Copyright 2001, Oxford University Press.