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61. The Role of Agriculture in China's Development: Past Failures, Present Successes and Future Challenges

Author:
Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The view toward agricultural and rural development in the modern world has changed dramatically in the past several decades. Traditionally, agriculture was thought of an inferior partner in development. Since the size of the sector falls during development, it was logically considered that it could be ignored. Why is that leaders would ever want to invest in a sector that shrinking? Some academics urged policy makers to treat agriculture like a black box from which resources could be costlessly extracted (Lewis, 1954). All investment was supposed to be targeted at the industry and the cities. As a low productivity sector, it did not deserve investment.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

62. Irrigation Water Pricing Policy in China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Richard Howitt, and Jinxia Wang
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
As water becomes scarcer in northern China, designing policies that can induce water users to save water has become one of the most important tasks facing China's leader. Past water policies may not be a solution for the water scarcity problem in the long run. This paper looks at a new water policy: increasing water prices so as to provide water users with direct incentives to save water. Using a methodology that allows us to incorporate the resource constraints, we are able to recover the true price of water with a set of plot level data. Our results show that farmers are quite responsive if the correct price signal is used, unlike estimates of price elasticities that are based on traditional methods. Our estimation results show that water is severely under priced in our sample areas in China. As a result, water users are not likely to respond to increases in water prices. Thus as the first step to establishing an effective water pricing policy, policy makers must increase water price to the level of VMP so that water price reflects the true value of water, the correct price signal. Increases in water prices once they are set at the level of VMP, however, can lead to significant water savings. However, our analysis also shows that higher water prices also affect other aspects of the rural sector. Higher irrigation costs will lower the production of all crops, in general, and that of grain crops, in particular. Furthermore, when facing higher irrigation costs, households suffer income losses. Crop income distribution also worsens with increases in water prices.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and Environment
Political Geography:
China and Asia

63. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

64. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

65. Information, Incentives and Institutions: Experimenting with Private-Public Partnerships to Link the Poor with Modern Supply Chains

Author:
Jikun Huang, Johan Swinnen, Marcel Fafchamps, Tom Reardon, Bart Minten, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
To lift more than 10,000 farmers directly out of poverty by developing new Best-Practice Models for linking the poor to modern supply chains and after scaling up by our private and public partners to lift more than 1 million farmers out of poverty.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, Asia, Senegal, and Madagascar

66. China and the OECD

Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
China's economic growth has averaged 9½ per cent over the past two decades. The rapid pace of economic change is likely to be sustained for some time. These gains have contributed not only to higher personal incomes, but also to a significant reduction in poverty. At the same time, the economy has become substantially integrated with the world economy. A large part of these gains have come through profound shifts in government policies. Reforms have allowed market prices and private investors to play a significant role in production and trade.
Topic:
Agriculture, Government, and International Organization
Political Geography:
China and Asia

67. Resource-Poor Farmers in South India: On the Margins or Frontiers of Globalization?

Author:
Rimjhim M. Aggarwal
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
It is often argued that an important reason why globalization may lead to GDP growth but fail to reduce poverty is because the poor are unable to participate in the new market opportunities and are marginalized. In this paper we examine the experience of resource-poor farmers in south India, who participated aggressively in the new market opportunities that opened up with trade reforms. However, these expanded market opportunities failed to improve their welfare. The paper examines why and how this happened.
Topic:
Agriculture, Globalization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
India and Asia

68. Agricultural Policy Reform in China

Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
China is the world's sixth largest economy and its most populous country, home to 1.3 billion people or 21% of the Earth's total population. But it faces a major challenge in providing its people with food – China has only 10% of the world's arable land and only one quarter of the average world water resources per person.
Topic:
Agriculture, Civil Society, and Economics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

69. Current Economic Conditions in Myanmar and Options for Sustainable Growth

Author:
David Dapice
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
In this paper, an extensive report on the economy of Myanmar prepared in 1998 is supplemented by more recent reports as of fall 2002 (included as appendices).
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Asia