Allocative inefficiency in agriculture is an issue puzzling researchers and policy‐makers in China. Based on household data from the China Family Panel Studies of 2012, the present paper quantifies the potential distortions in China's agricultural production and examines their underlying...

Farmers have started to adopt information and communication technology (ICT), which has considerable potential to impact farm performance. This study uses data from a 2018 survey of 763 vegetable smallholder farms in China to estimate the impact of ICT on technical efficiency (TE). We adopt...

The impact of environmental regulation on firm productivity has been long been debated, however, mainly for western economies and with limited firm-level evidence. We study the impact of a large-scale national energy saving program (the Top 1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program, or T1000P,...

This paper investigates the linkages between farmers' machinery investment decision and off-farm employment in China. Both the theoretical model and the empirical results based on a survey of 453 households in Anhui Province indicate that agricultural labor input and small-size machinery...

As crop straw and firewood are generated as by-products of food production systems, they are perceived to be sustainable energy sources that do not threaten food security by Chinese government for a long time. However, the time spent on collecting straw and firewood may create a burden on rural...

By overcoming the barriers that limit access to financial liquidity and human resource, the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) can promote rural livelihood diversification. This paper examines this effect using a household survey data set spanning the 1999 implementation of the Sloping land...

In the late 1990s, China aimed to mitigate environmental degradation from agricultural production activities by introducing the world's largest 'Payments for Environmental Services' (PES) program ― the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). In order to analyze its effects on agricultural...

There are alternative definitions of vulnerability to poverty. Most researchers prefer to define vulnerability as the probability of a household or individual falling into poverty in the future. Based on this definition and using household survey panel data from rural China, this paper attempt...

It is well known in theory that certain forms of non-linear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. The potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient poverty will be an investment with lasting benefits,...