China Agricultural Economic Review

Jing Zhu; Shu Zhang; Wusheng Yu

2013 China Agricultural Economic Review

doi: 10.1108/17561371311331089

Purpose – This paper therefore aims at systematically estimating the agricultural trade induced farm employment effects in China. Design/methodology/approach – Using detailed agricultural trade and production data during 1994‐2009, the authors estimate the “labor contents” of agricultural trade flows and use these estimates to compute the farm employment effects. Findings – The authors find that China's agricultural trade has indeed generally developed along its widely believed comparative advantages and disadvantages; however, the farm employment “creation” effect due to labor‐intensive exports has actually been dominated by the employment “substitution” effect due to increased land‐intensive imports, thereby mostly resulting in negative net farm employment in the post‐WTO accession era. Originality/value – Findings from this first systematic attempt to estimate the trade‐induced farm employment effects do not lend support to the popular notion that increased agricultural trade would help increase farm employment and have important implications for evaluating current and future trade policy in China and elsewhere.

Fung Kwan; Yanrui Wu; Shuaihe Zhuo

2013 China Agricultural Economic Review

doi: 10.1108/17561371311331098

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to the pool of studies of rural underemployment in China. It is devoted to the conceptualization and measurement of surplus labour. Design/methodology/approach – The agricultural labour requirement function is estimated by the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) with China's prefecture‐level data. Surplus labour or inefficient labour is obtained by subtracting the required labour from the actual labour participated in agriculture. Findings – The authors' analysis indicates that the existing size of agricultural surplus labour in rural China is still significantly large with the continued practice of the household registration system and China's WTO membership. However, the size has been decreasing over the last decade. Research limitations/implications – Quality of data might affect the authors' estimates. Practical implications – The phenomenon of the coexistence of surplus agricultural labour and shortage of workers in non‐agricultural production in urban China was discussed in line with the authors' research findings, as this has important impacts on the policies of rural industrialization in China. Social implications – This paper further argues that China is probably experiencing the second stage of the Lewis‐Fei‐Ranis dualistic economic framework. Originality/value – The authors' paper is probably the first to use prefecture data and SFA for panel data study of surplus agricultural labour in China. The analysis is essential to the understanding of the rural labour market during its rapid transition.

Zhao Chen; Xiaofeng Liu; Ming Lu

2013 China Agricultural Economic Review

doi: 10.1108/17561371311331106

Purpose – This paper aims to answer the following questions concerning rural‐to‐urban labor migration in China: What is the impact of discrimination against non‐Hukou in urban public service provision? Will such discrimination disappear in the future within the current policy‐making framework? What is the result of such an endogenous policy change as far as urbanization and economic growth are concerned? Design/methodology/approach – The authors build a theoretical model of rural‐urban migration, taking into account the cost of social conflict due to discrimination against urban non‐Hukou in local public service. The possibility of endogenous policy change is also considered by numerical simulation. Findings – The authors prove that, in the early stage of urban economic growth when the losses of potential conflicts are relatively small, the exclusive urban public service provision may be beneficial to them, but the losses under such unequal public service provision policy increase in the process of urban growth, and after a certain stage of development, opening public service access equally to the immigrants will be a better choice, even if only the natives' utility is considered. Such an endogenous policy change not only decreases the within‐city inequality and conflicts, but also advances the urbanization and urban economic growth. Research limitations/implications – The authors only consider two extreme cases of local public service provision, that is, the urban non‐Hukou residents have equal access to public service or they are totally not entitled. The possibility of partial access to local public service is not considered in the model. Originality/value – The authors investigate impact of social conflicts on within‐city inequality, urbanization as well as urban economic growth due to unequal social public service within urban residents. The model also shows an endogenous policy change during rural‐urban labor migration.

Zi‐cheng Wang; Wei‐guo Yang

2013 China Agricultural Economic Review

doi: 10.1108/17561371311331115

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to quantify the impact of return migration on the occupational choice in rural China. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ research uses the two‐stage residuals inclusion estimation, 2SRI, to deal with the endogeneity problem, and then compares the occupational choice between returnees and stayers with multinomial logit estimation and counterfactual analysis. Findings – The authors mainly find that: the migration experience has a significant positive impact on wage‐employment activities, but may be has a negative effect on the entrepreneurial activities. The workers engaged in non‐agricultural activities (self‐employment and wage‐employment) have the same characteristics in the labor market (i.e. younger, male, higher education levels, less average land and parents with little children) compared to the agricultural activities, but these characteristics show no significant affect on the occupation choice between self‐employment and wage‐employment. Research limitations/implications – This paper extends the empirical analysis in internal migration, but it also has some drawbacks, such as not enough data can be obtained to distinguish the occupations between different types of self‐employment as own account workers and as entrepreneurs. Further research needs more comprehensive data to support. Originality/value – The authors’ research is the first study which uses self‐selection model to examine the activity choice of return migrants in rural China. They also extend the existing studies in two directions: first, they use nationally‐representative data from the general social survey of China carried out in 2006 to examine the relationship between the return rural migrants and their occupational choices. Second, they propose a more exact category for rural occupational choice including non‐agricultural activities (self‐employee, wage‐employment) and agricultural activities (peasants).

Chengfang Liu; Linxiu Zhang; Jikun Huang; Renfu Luo; Hongmei Yi; Yaojiang Shi; Scott Rozelle

2013 China Agricultural Economic Review

doi: 10.1108/17561371311331124

Purpose – This paper aims to explain why the quality of infrastructure projects in rural China differs from village to village and how project quality is correlated with project design attributes and governance factors. Design/methodology/approach – Using primary data collected by the authors on three types of infrastructure projects in villages across China, they created measures of project quality for each village. They then used both descriptive and multivariate approaches to examine how quality varies from village to village and factors correlated with quality. Findings – Between‐project within‐village quality differences are small and project design has little explanatory power. Between‐village variations are large. There are strong correlations between the ways villages govern themselves and project quality. The authors conclude that it is difficult to make good projects work in communities that lack good governance. Originality/value – Disaggregated data on the quality of infrastructure (and its determinants) were collected by the authors to allow for variation in the type of infrastructure projects (roads, irrigation, and drinking water) and variation in village governance, making it possible to identify and contrast the effects of project design and village governance factors on project quality. As its chief contribution, this work identifies potential ways to improve the quality of infrastructure projects in rural development.

Xianlei Ma ; Nico Heerink; Ekko van Ierland; Marrit van den Berg; Xiaoping Shi

2013 China Agricultural Economic Review

doi: 10.1108/17561371311331133

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of perceived land tenure security in China on farmers' decisions to invest in relatively long‐term land quality improvement measures, taking into account the potential endogeneity of tenure security. Design/methodology/approach – Data from a survey held in 2008 and 2010 among 259 households in Minle County, Gansu province, covering the years 2007 and 2009, are used to estimate the factors affecting land levelling investments, irrigation canal investments and perceived land tenure security. The authors use the 2SCML technique and the IVLS method to estimate a selection model and a non‐limited regression model, respectively, and use IVP methods to examine the robustness of the results. Findings – The authors' results indicate that perceived land tenure security significantly affects self‐governed investments but does not affect individual investments in land quality improvements. In particular, the authors find that households that consider land certificates as important for protecting land rights invest significantly more in irrigation canals construction and maintenance. The authors' results further provide evidence that individual investments in land quality improvement contribute to higher perceived land tenure security. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the available literature on the relationship between land tenure security and land investments by examining the role of perceived (instead of formal) land tenure security and by making a distinction between individual household investments and self‐governed land investments. The authors' results provide an explanation for the phenomenon that land readjustments still take place in some parts of China, but not in others.