Water scarcity is likely to increase in the coming years, making improvements in irrigation efficiency increasingly important. An emerging technology that promises to increase irrigation efficiency substantially is a wireless irrigation sensor network that uploads sensor data into irrigation...

Consumer demands for labeling of genetically modified (GM) food products have the potential to dramatically impact the way food crops are produced and distributed in the U.S. In May 2014 Vermont became the first U.S. state to legally require the labeling of GM foods. This study uses several...

We study the relationship between industry-level investments in intangible capital (IC) and three key economic indicators in China. We find that investments in IC are productivity-enhancing among Chinese enterprises—more so in domestically owned than in foreign invested enterprises. Consistent...

This paper studies the effect of local off-farm employment and migration on rural households’ technical efficiency of crop production using a five-year panel dataset from more than 2,000 households in five Chinese provinces. While there is not much debate about the positive contribution of...

Rapid economic growth in China’s booming regions has left other areas of the country lagging behind. We shed light on the poverty dynamics of one such region by analyzing a census-like survey of three administrative villages of Guizhou province in 2004, 2006, 2009, and 2011. While the absolute...

We examine how the system of “federalism, Chinese style” functions in the context of land allocation. China’s land laws give provision of land a central role in local officials’ growth promotion strategies. Requisitions of farmland by local authorities have engendered significant rural...

This study primarily focuses on the effect of information on consumers’ purchasing behavior. If consumers are provided with information about a specific product they may change their beliefs about that product. This distribution of information may lead the consumer to make the decision either...

This paper addresses the challenges facing China in accelerating the pace of rural-urban migration as part of its on-going economic development programme. It explains the push and pull influences on migration and in particular explains why a continuing focus on urbanisation is justified by the...

Food processing has been widely recognized as a traditional, unskilled-labor intensive production. Yet rapid development in technology drives food processing into more sophisticated and technology-oriented industry. This paper utilizes a fixed effects model to test the hypothesis that the food...