Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

Wang, Xiaobing ; Yamauchi, Futoshi ; Otsuka, Keijiro ; Huang, Jikun

World Bank Group, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRARIAN STRUCTURE;    AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES;    AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT;    AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS;    AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7138
RP-ID  :  WPS7138

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper uses farm panel data fromChina to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machineinvestments, and the demand for machine services. Recently,China's agriculture has experienced a large expansionof machine rentals and machine services provided byspecialized agents, which has contributed to mechanizationof agricultural production. The empirical results show thatan increase in nonagricultural wage rates leads to expansionof self-cultivated land size. A rise in the proportion ofnonagricultural income or the migration rate also increasesthe size of self-cultivated land. Interestingly, however,relatively educated farm households decrease the size ofself-cultivated land, which suggests that relatively lesseducated farmers tend to specialize in farming. The demandfor machine services has also increased if agricultural wageand migration rate increased over time, especially amongrelatively large farms. The results on crop income supportthe complementarity between rented-in land and machineservices (demanded), which implies that scale economies arearising in Chinese agriculture with mechanization and activeland rental markets.