| Abstract: | This paper uses household-level datasets called Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys to investigate the regional technical efficiency, technology gap, and their determinants in rural China. A metafrontier production function approach is employed to fit the values of the technical efficiency and the technology gap ratio of rural households in six regions of China. The findings indicate that the technical efficiency improved remarkably from 1988 to 2002, but the technology gap ratio among regions changed slightly in the same period. The findings also show a negative relationship between the technology gap ratio and the regional technical efficiency for all regions except the northwest that has the lowest value of both the technical efficiency and the technology gap ratio. Next, the Tobit model is employed to discern the sources of efficiency and technology gaps. The results show that quality of agricultural labor, agricultural infrastructure, natural conditions, and farmer's political status have significant effects on farms' technical efficiency and technology gap ratio. |
