The impact of grain self‐sufficiency regime on regional welfare and agricultural productivity in China
研究了1998年中国粮食自给自足政策如何影响区域层面粮农的生产率和福利，发现价格管制虽短期提升福利，但长期因抑制生产激励而可能降低农业产出。
Abstract The nineties’ agricultural reforms in China that were aimed at deregulating the agricultural market eventually resulted in a huge drop in agricultural production and a high rate of inflation in agricultural input prices; this apparently motivated the government to introduce the grain self‐sufficiency regime in 1998. We examine how and to what extent this reform affected the productivity and welfare of grain farmers in China at the regional level. We find that the price regulations that destroyed the incentive to exert more effort adversely affected the growth in agricultural productivity but contributed to the growth in farmers’ welfare. Although the price regulations resulted in short‐term improvement in welfare across all the regions, in the long run such regulations can potentially result in larger drop in agricultural production because of its negative impact on the incentives to produce more.