Efficiency and technology gap in China's agriculture: A regional meta-frontier analysis

This paper utilizes a unique county-level dataset to examine technical efficiency and technology gap in China's agriculture. We classify the counties into four regions with distinctive levels of economic development, and hence production technologies. A meta-frontier analysis is used. We find t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChina economic review Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 287 - 296
Main Authors CHEN, Zhuo, SONG, Shunfeng
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Inc 01.06.2008
Elsevier
SeriesChina Economic Review
Subjects
China's grain production
County-level
Meta-frontier
Stochastic production frontier
Technical efficiency
SSB
LP
Technical efficiency
D24
County-level
SPF
N55
O13
TE
Stochastic production frontier
OLS
China's grain production
GVAO
Meta-frontier
TGR
QP
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Summary:This paper utilizes a unique county-level dataset to examine technical efficiency and technology gap in China's agriculture. We classify the counties into four regions with distinctive levels of economic development, and hence production technologies. A meta-frontier analysis is used. We find that although the eastern counties have the highest efficiency scores with respect to the regional frontier but the northeastern region leads in terms of agricultural production technology nationwide. Meanwhile, the mean efficiency of the northeastern counties is particularly low, suggesting technology and knowledge diffusion within region might help to improve production efficiency and thus agricultural output.
ISSN:1043-951X
1873-7781
DOI:10.1016/j.chieco.2007.03.001