Study On China Agricultural Productivity In Transformational Perspective

Since the three decades of reform and opening up's transformation period, under the circumstance that the agricultural resources endowments are not very ideal, Chinese people have made a vigorous response to the puzzle "Who will support China" with their practical measures. Furthermore, while Chinese agriculture has achieved its transformation of traditional type into modern type in the transformation period, it keeps on accommodating itself to the transformation process of the large-scale economy and institutions which has already taken place and remains so for the time being. How to correctly analyze the Chinese agriculture success gained in the past and its shortcomings is not only very crucial to the future of China but also gives clues to other developing countries. Following the transference of extensive economic growth into intensive economic growth plays a key role in the success of future agriculture as well as the inevitable choice for the agriculture facing the drastic changes to the external conditions. As the epitome of the intensive growth mode, the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) reflects that production units transfer the input into convention efficiency of the output in the input-output process. And the contributions of the factors beyond factor input, such as technological progress, efficiency improvement, institution changes, and human capital, to the output growth will ultimately reflect in the changes of Total Factor Productivity. With its broad horizon and huge compatibility, the theory of the Total Factor Productivity becomes a relatively ideal analysis framework.Using the theory of the Total Factor Productivity as its theory framework and Production Frontiers Approach as the empirical study framework., the dissertation combines the theory analysis with empirical analysis, the principles such as agricultural economics, development economics, technical economics, new institutional economics, human capital theory, and capability approach, to analyze the supply aspects of Chinese agriculture on the fundamental aspect from the perspective of transformation. The research mainly consists of factor utilizing characteristics in agricultural production, the change patterns (time and space) of the growth of the Total Factor Productivity in provinces, business foundations of the Total Factor Productivity change and growth factor analysis (micro and macro), the value of human capital investment etc. The dissertation goes a deep analysis about the policy goals to promote China's agricultural development and gain a greater benefit for the peasantry from the perspective of micro-family endowments, macro-institutional changes, human capital, and capability approach so as to give empirical evidences to have a thorough comprehension about how China reforms traditional agriculture in the transformation period. Belongs to the category of afterwards' research, the dissertation, according to the principle of history consistent with the logic, employs the analysis framework of macro and micro combination. This dissertation consists of seven chapters.The first chapter is the introduction. As a bird view of the whole dissertation, this chapter explains the topic, research background and research significance. Secondly, it details the goals, research contents and the layout of the dissertation. Thirdly, it details the research perspectives, including basic hypothesizes, research methods and specific data sources. Finally, it is the literature review. Apart from the explanation to the relevant theory, it focuses on the commentary on the trends of studies on the relevant fields from home and abroad.The second chapter provides China's overall impressions on the agricultural productivities, namely, to discuss the historical changes and basic stylized facts of agricultural productivity growth in the period of transformation. This mainly includes single-factor productivity growth and the solid evidences for the technological progress reflected by it. After that, it measures and decomposes the Total Factor Productivity growth in the total amount of agriculture through the non-parameter decomposition framework of Production Frontiers Approach. This chapter focuses on the empirical analysis of the Total Factor Productivity growth of the agriculture in the period of transformation and the mode of temporal-spatial evolution (temporal evolution, spatial distribution, and spatial evolution) of the source. Basing on the convergence theory of the economic growth theory, it examines the situations like absolute convergence and conditional convergence.The third chapter seeks after the business foundations for the Total Factor Productivity growth, decomposition, and changes of China's agriculture in the period of transformation. Basing on the macro and the analysis on the Total Factor Productivity growth in the total amount of agriculture, this chapter draws the support of the parameter decomposition framework of the Production Frontiers Approach and the micro-industrial data in Quan Guo Nong Chan Pin Cheng Ben Shou Yi Zi Liao Hui Bian to measure and decompose the Total Factor Productivity growth of the 21 industries within the agriculture in the transformation period, so as to seek out the business foundations for the Total Factor Productivity growth and sources of the agriculture, and to enhance the empirical foundation of the study. Meanwhile, more directive policy proposals could be arrived to avoid the policy mislead caused by the deviation made by industrial diversities.The forth chapter looks out the micro-decisive factors of the agricultural productivity growth in the period of transformation. This chapter uses the data of rural households in Hubei province as an example. And it hunts for the micro-decisive factors of the agricultural productivity and the sources of growth from the micro-perspective of the rural household endowments, which provides a micro-base for the entire research and policy proposals. For the discussions about the Inverse Relationship (IR) between the developing countries' agricultural efficiencies and the scale of the rural households, this chapter bats around the proposition of "Is the small-sized rural household more efficient?" within a broader horizon which includes the labor productivity, land productivity, cost profit margin, total factor productivity and technical efficiency. It expands the traditional research that usually simply from the perspective of land productivity to make analysis.The fifth chapter seeks after macro-decisive mechanism of China's agricultural productivity growth and sources in the transformation period. At first, this chapter gives an historical retrospection and property analysis of the changes of main economic institutions for China's rural areas in the transformation period, and based on which makes an efficient quantification on provincial level. By setting up the fixed-effect model of panel data on the provincial level, the empirical study analyzes macro-decisive factors and mechanism of the Total Factor Productivity and constitutions of the agriculture from the macro-perspective of institutional changes. And it deeply discusses the impact of the macroeconomic institutional changes on the agricultural productivity. Basing on the previous micro-analysis, the whole work discusses the macro-performances of the study object.The sixth chapter probes into the relationships between the human capital accumulation in rural areas and agriculture productivity, and emphasizes on the more basic structuring values that exist in the human capital input. First this chapter takes an effective distinction and empirical estimation of human capital that acts on the direct and indirect factor effects of agricultural growth on the basis of the estimation of rural human capital stock and quantitation in the all provinces of rural China, which, on balance, is an instrumental effect. And then, basing on the Development Outlook of human's development and Sen's Capability Approach, and from the point that the peasantry should play an principal part in the transformation process of China's agriculture, this chapter comprehensively reasons that to invest in the peasantry and the "capability-building" have constructive values to promote the peasantry's capability of participating in the whole agricultural development and China's development process.The seventh chapter draws basic conclusions and views the research prospects. The basic conclusions drawn from the study here and the policy implications contained are summarized review of this dissertation. The research prospects, apart from the possible innovations based on the predecessors' efforts, refers those shortcomings exist in the dissertations and according to which, the further researches that the dissertation should make.Persisting in the transformation to the intensive growth mode aimed to enhance contributions of the Total Factor Productivity, the basic conclusions of the dissertation believe, is not only the most important reason for the success of China's agriculture in the past, but also is an important development trend. Even as to be an intensive growth mode, to realize the "dual driven" productivity - the technological progress coexisted with the promotion of efficiency, is the ideal model to realize the sustainable development for the future agriculture. In short, the agricultural Total Factor Productivity growth is mainly driven by the frontier technological progress, and the contribution of the technical efficiency improvements is limited. Also, the contributions by the productivity growth which is related to the economic development level of the all provinces to the agricultural growth are periodic in general. Apart from the conditional convergence, no other convergence exists in the productivity growth. And different industries have remarkable differences in the productivity growth mode from the industrial estimation, and it is necessary to take different policies, among which, the general technological progress feature and efficiency deterioration mostly occurred since the 90s of the last century. The rural households' micro-family endowments and macro-economic institutional changes are the important factors that influence on the growth from the growth factors analysis of the productivity. The basic conclusions also hold that an overall look in a broader vision should be given to the earlier hypothesis that between the agricultural efficiency and rural household scale existed inverse direction relations. And did the small-sized rural household relative to the large-sized do enjoy the comparative advantages depends on the policy goals that should be given priority in the whole policy guidance. Nevertheless, the human capital investments, except for having the direct production factor effect on the economic growth and the instrumental values of the indirect productivity effect, give the more far-reaching constructive values to the whole human development.