This paper seeks to understand how market imperfections affect the behavior of consumers in China's rural economy. A theoretical and empirical model is developed and estimated using a household-level data from six counties in Hebei Province. The results show that market development plays an...

"This paper accounts for the structural changes now taking place in China ... and suggests that China is not likely to become either an enormous importer or exporter of grain. Ultimately, though, China's grain balances will depend on decisions made by Chinese policymakers rather than natural...

The future of China's grain economy has been the subject of much debate. Some observers predict rapidly increasing grain imports that will strain the world's productive capacity. Most of China's own economists disagree: researchers in the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have long...

Although farmers in developing countries are generally thought to be risk averse, little is known about the actual form of their risk preferences. In this paper, we use a relatively large field experiment to explore risk preferences related to sweet potato production among a sample of farmers in...

Regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a useful tool for evaluating programs when a single variable is used to determine program eligibility. RDD has also been used to evaluate programs when eligibility is based on multiple variables that have been aggregated into a single index using...

"A growing body of evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can have strong, positive effects on a range of welfare indicators for poor households in developing countries. However, the contribution of individual program components toward achieving these outcomes is not...

Although conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are traditionally evaluated in relation to child schooling and nutrition outcomes, there is growing interest in specifically examining maternal and reproductive health impacts. However, since data collection is not typically designed to evaluate these...