The top-down public agricultural extension system in China and its early commercialization reforms during the 1990s have left millions of farmers without access to extension services. A pilot inclusive agricultural extension system was introduced in 2005 to better meet the diverse needs of...

In developing countries, identifying the most effective community-level governance structure is a key issue and, increasingly, empirical evaluation of the effects of democratization on the provision of local public goods is needed. Since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of villages in rural...

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...

Many Asian countries are expected to undergo transformations in their economies and rapid urbanization over the next 25 years. The changes in tastes and lifestyles engendered by urban living are likely to have significant influences on food demand influences perhaps as strong as the...