| This dissertation is focus on the positive research on the agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) in the growing process of agriculture in China. The enhancement of agricultural TFP is not only the urgent requirement of the transform of agricultural increasing mode, but also the key of development from a giant country of agriculture to a strong one. The present studies agree that the level of agricultural TFP in China is relatively low, but it is rare that the dissertations in which the researcher does a deeply study on the slow growth of agricultural TFP. The core of this research is to study what are reasons for decelerate the China's agricultural TFP growth, even it is so important to the society. The goals of this research consist of three aspects, one of which is to grasp the law of enhancement of China's agricultural TFP and its tendency of evolution, and then try to understand the growth source and the intrinsic motivation of agriculture in China, and reveal the decisive factors and their implications of the enhancement of China's agricultural TFP.The research is conducted along this process:after reviewing the economic growth theory and TFP theory, performing the systematic measurement and analysis on the enhancement and component of China's agricultural TFP between 1978 and 2008, started from the important position of TFP in China's agricultural growth, with the subject of agricultural TFP, added by the positive frame that is composed by the stochastic frontier analysis and data envelope analysis (DEA), and analysing the laws of variation and tendency of fluctuation of the growth of China's agricultural TFP; on the previous basis, the improved DEA economic growth analysing frame is conducted to study the contribution effects and laws of variation of agricultural TFP growth in the three levels of state, three regions and 29 provinces. In the following, the decisive factors and mechanism of implications are able to be revealed by the panel data model, and the policy suggestions to agricultural TFP enhancement in China are capable to be proposed ultimately.1.Research contentsThe main contents of this study are composed by the following items:(1) Establishing a logical starting point and analysing frame of this study. By reviewing and using the economic growth theories and TFP theories for reference, the conception of agricultural TFP, decisive factors and methods of measurement are all clarified, which act as the logical starting point and analysing frame of this study.(2) Analysing the laws of variation and tendency of fluctuation of agricultural TFP growth in China. In this section, a combined measurement of stochastic frontier analysis and DEA is going to be performed to identify the state levels of agricultural TFP growth and its components between 1978 and 2008, on the three ranks of state level, three regions (eastern China, middle China and western China), and 29 provinces. In the following, the laws of variation, the tendency of fluctuation and the regional differences have all been analysed thoroughly.(3) Exploring the contribution effect made by agricultural TFP growth to the growth of agriculture in China. On the base of reviewing the developing process of agriculture in China and clarifying the main factors to agriculture growth, an improved DEA economic growth analysing frame is applied to explore the contribution effect and laws of variation of agricultural TFP in agricultural growth on the levels of state, three regions and 29 provinces.(4) Analysing the intrinsic factors of the enhancement of agricultural TFP.On the base of theoretical analysis on the intrinsic factors of China's agricultural TFP growth, the panel data model is applied to test and reveal the intrinsic decisive factors of China's agricultural TFP growth, followed by the discussion on the implications caused by these intrinsic decisive factors.(5) Analysing the extrinsic factors of the enhancement of agricultural TFP. The panel data model is used to test and reveal the extrinsic decisive factors of agricultural TFP growth on the basis of theoretical research of relations between the extrinsic factors and agricultural TFP growth, followed by the discussion on the implications caused by these extrinsic decisive factors.2. Important conclusions(1) Insisting on the transformation to the intensive growth mode aiming at the enhancement of TFP contribution is the crucial reason for the success of agriculture in the sample duration, and the fundamental direction of development in the future. The positive research on the samples between 1978 and 2008 shows that no matter on the level of state, region or province, and no matter on the sample period or the different sub-durations of the samples, the contribution of agricultural TFP growth to the output of agriculture is simultaneous, i.e., the rate of increment of output of agriculture is relatively high when the TFP grows fast, and vice versa. The analysis on the possible growth modes for transformation reveals that the real and applicable alternative for transformation of agricultural growth mode is to make progress on agricultural TFP, with the premise that the increasing velocity of current investment of entity factors keeps constant, on which this conclusion can be deduced and verified. It is clear that the consistent transformation to the intensive growth mode of which the goal is to enhance the contribution of agricultural TFP is the crucial reason for the success of China's agriculture, and the fundamental direction in the future development.(2) The progress of agricultural technologies is the core power of agricultural TFP enhancement. By separating and analysing the factors of agricultural TFP variation, it can be safely concluded that China's agricultural TFP has increased by 2.5% with fluctuation between 1978 and 2008, within which 160% is due to the progress of agricultural technology, but the contribution to the efficiency improvement is-60%. Examining the characteristics of time serial progress of agricultural TFP variation, the contributions of agricultural technology to the agricultural TFP enhancement are 110% from 1979 to 1984,228% from 1985 to 1991,232% from 1992 to 1997,153% from 1998 to 2002 and 96% from 2003 to 2008, with the contributions to the technological efficiency improvement are-10%,-128%,-132%,-53% and 7% respectively. Examining the characteristics of position distribution of agricultural TFP variation, the enhancement in east is significantly higher than the middle and west. Although the advantage of technological efficiency in east is significantly better than middle and west, the progress of agricultural technology has acted as the main source of agricultural TFP enhancement. All those data verifies that the progress of agricultural technology is the core power of China's agricultural TFP growth.(3) The hindrance that China's agricultural TFP growth is encountering is the serious loss of technical efficiency, which is the cross consequence of pure technology and scale efficiency insufficiency. The mean value of China's agricultural technical efficiency of the whole country decreased by 29.2 percentage points from 1978 to 2008,which caused the growth rate of agricultural TFP decreased by 1.4 percentage points. According to the analysis on separated agricultural technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency decreased 10.4 percentage points and scale efficiency 20 percentage points from 1978 to 2008, which leaded to the reduction of growth rate of agricultural technical efficiency with 0.7 percentage points. The research reveals that the degrees of technology application in the provinces are relatively low, and the gap between agricultural production and technical effective frontier is enlarged gradually, which means that the current agricultural technology is able to be improved. The advancement of agricultural technical efficiency is the potential power of China's agricultural TFP,which the breakthrough point to make real is to accelerate the spreading of current agricultural technologies, reduce the regional differences and enhance the pure technical efficiency, moreover, to strengthen the marketisation reform, boost the effective flow of factors(including capital, labour force etc.) and make progress on the scale and allocative efficiencies of agricultural production.(4) The fluctuation of agricultural TFP is tightly related to the rural economic environment of development, the direction of macroeconomic policies and regulation assignment. This research discovered that the growth rate of agricultural TFP is 5.0% from 1980 to 1984,0.7% from 1985 to 1991,3.4% from 1992 to 1997,3.1% from 1998 to 2002, and 3.2% from 2003 to 2008, among which the important reason for the increment from 1980 to 1984, from 1992 to 1996 and from 2003 to 2008 was the beneficial regulation assignment to the rural area, including the extension of household contract responsibility system, the progress on marketisation reform, performance of the coordination of urban and rural development strategy etc., which encouraged the producers' initiative significantly, and the feature of enhancement is shown by the catch-up effect of middle and western regions to the east. However, the crucial reason for the reduction of agricultural TFP from 1985 to 1991 and from 1997 to 2002 is the decline of reform benefits and its stagnation, with the disappearance of the catch-up effect in the previous durations.(5) The TFP growth with coexistence of progress on agricultural technology and agricultural technical efficiency improvement is the ideal mode for the sustainable progress of future agriculture in China, but the distinguished policies are required to make it real. Examining the agricultural TFP variation by separating the durations, the relatively high velocity of TFP growth is always the result of the synchronising progress on advanced technology and its efficiency, but the out-sync progress is the intrinsic reason for the growth velocity of TFP sliding downwards. Examining the agricultural TFP variation on the features of position distribution, the eastern agricultural TFP growth is significantly higher than the middle and west. Although the advantage of technical efficiency in east is more obvious than the middle and west, the progress on agricultural technology acts as the main source of agricultural TFP growth. However, according to the results of exploring the TFP growth variation and the separating consequences of 29 provinces, the inter-provincial TFP growth mode and route are significantly different, and the levels of agriculture and social economy distinguish significantly among different provinces. Therefore, the distinguished policies are required to be applied in order to lead and boost the realisation of the new TFP growth mode with coexistence of progress on advanced technology and technical efficiency improvement.(6) The deepening of material capital and the increment of human capital will promote the progress of China's agricultural TFP significantly. The positive research on the intrinsic factors of agricultural TFP shows that the agricultural TFP is positively related to material capital, human capital, research and development (R&D) expense, division of labour on the base of specialisation and foreign direct investment (FDI) respectively, except the import to the agricultural TFP. The analysis reveals that the implications to agricultural TFP of different kinds of intrinsic factors are various, within which the growth of TFP is negatively related to the continual progress on FDI, insignificantly influenced by the R&D expense and division of specialisation, and positively related by the continual deepening of capital, advancement of human capital significantly.(7) The "industry-favoured" and "city-favoured" strategies of development and the rigid regulations are the deep reason for the low-speed increment and instability of agricultural TFP. The positive research on the exogenous implications on agricultural TFP reveals that the growth of agricultural TFP is impeded by the relatively small-size operation by peasants'houses, and obviously hindered by the enhancement of industrialisation rate, ratio of financial expenses for agriculture and the "scissors differential" of prices of industrial and agricultural products, additionally, the agricultural TFP growth is indirectly blocked by the deagriculturalisation of agricultural labourers with high quality. Therefore, the "industry-favoured" and "city-favoured" strategies and their rigid regulations are the deeply reason for the low level and instability of TFP growth velocity, so that the continual progress on TFP needs the promotion of innovated regulation and perfected mechanism.3.Suggestions on policiesOn the base of the analysis in this entire dissertation, the suggestions on policies to enhance the agricultural TFP are able to be concluded with the combination of the main problems in agricultural development and the conclusions of some relevant literatures. They are listed as follows.(1) Establishing and perfecting the mechanism of technical innovation, promoting the progress of advanced technologies. The first measure is to transfer the function of government in order to create a suitable environment for the agricultural technical advancement; the second one is to reform and perfect the raise mechanism of agricultural science fund; the third one is to perfect the system of agricultural science research, active the agricultural scientists'initiative, and the last one is to raise the storage of agricultural science, make progress on the capacity for independent innovation of agriculture.(2) Building up a comprehensive perfect system, eliminating all the inefficient factors. The first measure is to deepen the land reform, perfect the land circulation mechanism in the whole rural area; the second one is to create a new mechanism of agricultural operations, enhance the peasants'degree of organisation; the third one is to deepen the reform of social security system, construct a guarantee for the system of equal sharing of development achievements by peasants; the fourth one is to deepen the reform of financial regulations, allocate more fund from the public finance to rural area, and the last one is to deepen the reform of finance system in rural area, promote the services to agriculture.(3) Perfecting the guarantee mechanism of investment, optimising the agricultural investment. The first measure is to optimise the structure of fund source, allocate more fund to agriculture; the second one is to optimise the direction of investment to agriculture, strengthen the investment to infrastructure construction and human resource development in rural area; the third one is to establish reasonable policy of regional investment, distribute more public investment to the agriculture in middle and western China; and the last one is to strengthen the management of support funds, improve its service efficiency.(4) Perfecting the system of agricultural technical extension, promoting the transference of technological achievements into reality. The first measure is to establish and perfect a service system of agricultural technologies extension oriented to the peasants or peasants' houses; the second one is to discover the new channel of investment, enhance the investment to agricultural technologies extension.(5) Strengthening the policies of agricultural support, constructing the financing mechanism to agriculture. On one hand, it is to promote the harmonious development in urban and rural areas, building up the harmonious relationship between them, eliminating all kinds of discriminative regulations, distributing the equal chances for development to agriculture and peasants; on the other hand, it is to continue strengthening the policies of agricultural support, perfect the financing mechanism, and encourage the resources to flow backwards to the agriculture.(6) Paying attention on the development of peasants'abilities, increase the storage of human capital. The first measure is to keep on investment to education on agriculture; the second one is to accelerate the reform of agricultural education, develop vocational and technical education; and the last one is to grasp the training on technologies, help peasants apply new technologies.4. Innovations(1) Performing a panoramic perspective to the laws of variation and tendency of fluctuation of China's agricultural TFP growth. This dissertation carried out the research on the agricultural TFP growth and its components on levels of state, three regions and 29 provinces between 1978 and 2008 from the stable and dynamic viewpoints respectively, with the positive analysis frame composed by stochastic frontier analysis and data envelope analysis (DEA), and clarified the laws of variation and tendency of fluctuation of China's agricultural TFP growth.(2) Revealing the growth source and intrinsic mechanism of China's agricultural TFP.On the base of separation on the TFP growth into agricultural technology progress and technical efficiency improvement, the research divided the agricultural technology efficiency into pure technology efficiency and scale efficiency, and examine the reasons and components of China's agricultural TFP growth. The study discovers that the agricultural technology is the core power of agricultural TFP growth, and the asynchronism between the progress of agricultural technology and technological efficiency is the intrinsic factor of TFP decline.(3) Revealing the endogenous decisive factor of China's agricultural TFP growth. The implications to China's agricultural TFP growth by some endogenous factors such as "learning by doing", research and development, human capital, specialisation and technical overflow are analysed in this dissertation, from which it can be concluded that the deepening of substantial capital and increment of human resource will put forward the progress of agricultural TFP significantly.(4) Extending the analysis on the implications of exogenous factors to China's agricultural TFP The dissertation enrols the variables such as regulation assignment, degree of marketisation, production policies and so on, which are important to the agricultural TFP growth but ignored in the previous researches, into the model and perform a quantitative analysis. The research reveals that the "industry-favoured" and "city-favoured" strategies and the rigid regulations are the deeply reasons for the low-speed increment and instability of agricultural TFP.
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