Machinery investment decision and off-farm employment in rural China

Ji, Yueqing; Fang, Zhong; Yu, Xiaohua

doi:10.1016/j.chieco.2011.08.001

Cited by 101 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Some earlier studies report positive correlations between investments in agricultural machines and remittances from migrants (de Brauw & Rozelle, 2008;Ji, Yu, & Zhong, 2012;Taylor, Rozelle, & de Brauw, 2003). This suggests that, with the expansion of off farm employment opportunities that increase their incomes, smallholders whose household members work outside the village are more likely to substitute own agricultural machines for labor.…”

Section: Wage Growth and Mechanization In Chinamentioning

confidence: 89%

Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

Wang¹,

Yamauchi²,

Otsuka³

et al. 2014

Policy Research Working Papers

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Summary. -This paper aims to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine investments, and the demand for machine services using farm panel data from China. Recently, China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion of machine rentals and machine services provided by specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization of agricultural production. On the other hand, the empirical results show that an increase in non-agricultural wage rates leads to expansion of self-cultivated land size. A rise in the proportion of non-agricultural income or the migration rate also increases the size of self-cultivated land. Interestingly, however, relatively educated farm households decrease the size of self-cultivated land, which suggests that relatively less educated farmers tend to specialize in farming. The demand for machine services has also increased if agricultural wage and migration rate increased over time, especially among relatively large farms. The results on crop income also support complementarities between rented-in land and machine services (demanded), which implies that scale economies are arising in Chinese agriculture with mechanization and active land rental markets.

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Section: Wage Growth and Mechanization In Chinamentioning

confidence: 89%

Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

Wang¹,

Yamauchi²,

Otsuka³

et al. 2014

Policy Research Working Papers

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show abstract

“…The effect is sizable; technical efficiency increases by 0.10 for every additional household member that participates in off-farm employment. The positive effect of off-farm employment on technical efficiency is expected because the households with off-farm employees are more likely to adopt new technologies and agricultural machinery (Ji et al, 2012). In addition to the main independent variable in Table 7, several other variables have a signifi cant effect on agricultural effi ciency.…”

Section: Determinant Of the Farms' Technical Effi Ciencymentioning

confidence: 98%

How Off‐farm Employment Affects Technical Efficiency of China's Farms: The Case of Jiangsu

Zhang

Eriksson

et al. 2016

China and World Economy

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Using three-wave survey data for four villages of Jiangsu Province in China, the present paper examines whether and to what extent off-farm employment affects the technical efficiency of agricultural production. The level of technical efficiency is measured using a stochastic frontier production function approach. Based on estimation results from instrumental variable panel quantile regressions we fi nd that there is a positive signifi cant effect of off-farm employment on the level of farm technical effi ciency. We also fi nd that fragmentation of farmland is a barrier to the improvement of technical effi ciency. In addition, we fi nd a downward trend in the level of agricultural technical efficiency among our sample. Therefore, the Chinese Government should stimulate agricultural mechanization and the development of farming techniques to improve technical effi ciency in the context of increasing off-farm employment.

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“…However, the rapid expansion of employment opportunities in nonagricultural sectors has changed the situation. It has increased the speed of mechanization over the past two decades or so (Ji et al., ; Yang et al., ; Wang et al., ). The National Statistics also shows that both the area of land cultivated and that of land harvested by machines increased by 4% and 9% annually from 1990 to 2012, respectively (NSBC, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rising wages, mechanization, and the substitution between capital and labor: evidence from small scale farm system in China

Wang

Yamauchi

Huang

2016

Agricultural Economics

127

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This article aims to investigate major factors that led to the observed pace of mechanization and the substitution between labor and machines in rural China. We used commodity-wise province-level panel data for more than a quarter of a century from 1984 to 2012. The analysis demonstrated a dramatic increase in real agricultural wages in recent years, especially after 2003, in contrast to a relatively stable real machine price. The relative price of machines against agricultural labor has declined in an accelerating way, which contributed to the observed rapid introduction of machines. The elasticity of substitution between labor and machines was large in some commodities, which contributed to a fast substitution of labor by machines.JEL classifications: J31, Q16

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Machinery investment decision and off-farm employment in rural China

Cited by 101 publications

References 20 publications

Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

How Off‐farm Employment Affects Technical Efficiency of China's Farms: The Case of Jiangsu

Rising wages, mechanization, and the substitution between capital and labor: evidence from small scale farm system in China

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