Agricultural productivity evolution in China: A generalized decomposition of the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indicator

China has undergone a series of agricultural policy reforms since 1978. The measurement of the productivity gains and identification of the underlying drivers thereof are important facets of policy analysis. The commonly used Total Factor Productivity (TFP) measures often lack such desirable properties as completeness or independence of the direction of the optimization (orientation). In this paper, we take a top down approach by beginning with a TFP measure and then decomposing it into three mutually exclusive, exhaustive elements. In particular, we begin with the additively complete Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen (LHM) TFP indicator that takes into account both input and output changes when measuring productivity and then additively decompose it into measures of technological progress, technical efficiency change, and scale efficiency change. We develop a generalized decomposition of the LHM TFP indicator which encompasses both input-oriented and output-oriented changes over time. We illustrate this additively complete LHM TFP indicator using agricultural data from 31 Chinese provinces over the period 1997–2015. Our empirical results show that Chinese agricultural productivity growth (3.05% per annum) was mainly driven by technological progress (2.35% p.a.), with relatively small contributions from scale efficiency change (0.65% p.a.) and technical efficiency change (0.04% p.a.). We also found that productivity change and the relative importance of its components varied across both time and provinces.     

The productivity impacts of energy efficiency programs in developing countries: Evidence from iron and steel firms in China

We study the impact of a national energy efficiency program on total factor productivity (TFP) growth in firms in China's iron and steel industry. Using detailed firm-level survey data and multiple approaches to estimate program effects, we find participating firms experienced greater annualized TFP change. Our base specification estimates the program increased annual TFP growth by 3.1 percentage points, implying an annual private benefit of 148.7 million RMB/year per firm, with approximately equal contributions from technical change and scale efficiency change. Our results suggest that firms undervalued energy efficiency investments prior to the start of the program.     

An Empirical Analysis of Provincial Productivity in China (1979–2001)

This study estimates and analyzes provincial productivity growth in China for the period 1979–2001. The Malmquist Index approach allows us to decompose productivity growth into two components, technological progress and efficiency change. Considerable productivity growth was found for most of the data period, but it was accomplished mainly through technological progress rather than efficiency improvement. Although China's capital stock has accumulated at record speed in recent years, our findings show that TFP growth slowed down significantly during 1995–2001. The study thus raises serious questions about whether China's recent growth pattern is consistent with its comparative advantages, and whether its reliance on capital accumulation can be sustained in the long run.     

1993-2005年广东农业生产率的变动与分解——基于Malmquist生产率指数的实证分析

本文使用非参数的Malmquist生产率指数方法,对广东省1993—2005年间农业全要素生产率（TFP）的变动趋势进行了考察,并把TFP的增长构成分解为技术进步、纯技术效率变化、规模效率变化三个部分。结果表明：13年间广东全省农业TFP的增长主要是由技术进步推动的,纯技术效率和规模效率的下降对TFP的增长造成了不利影响;农业TFP增长的地区水平差异显著,而且增长的结构也有所不同。最后是相应的政策建议。     

ASIAN DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES: CHINA AND INDONESIA COMPARED

China's and Indonesia's development strategies have been compared with others, but rarely with each other. Radically different political contexts have produced both similar and distinctly different development patterns. Each using formal planning, Indonesia spurred radical reforms to promote growth, whereas China opted for incremental reforms to ‘grow out of the Plan’, as a political device and to discover what policies and institutions worked. Both strategies produced environments largely conducive to rapid development. Indonesia relied on a few economic technocrats to oversee development; China used decentralisation and party reforms to create a credible environment for non-state investment. Both shared concern for agricultural reform and food security; both opted to open up for trade—China gradually, Indonesia radically. Both did well in growth and poverty reduction following reform. China's growth performance is in a league of its own, especially since Indonesia's Asian crisis setback, but Indonesia had more equitable growth and survived a difficult political transition with, in hindsight, modest costs.     

Productivity growth, technological progress, and efficiency change in chinese agriculture after rural economic reforms: A DEA approach

This study applies a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to analyze total factor productivity, technology, and efficiency changes in Chinese agricultural production from 1984 to 1993. Twenty-nine provinces in China were classified into advanced-technology and low-technology categories. The Malmquist (1953) productivity measures were decomposed into two components: technical change index and efficiency change index. The results show that total factor productivity has risen in most provinces for both technology categories during the 1984–1993 period. Technical progress was mostly attributed to Chinese agricultural productivity growth after the rural economic reforms. The deterioration in technical efficiency in many provinces indicates China has great potential to increase productivity through improved technical efficiency. Enhancing rural education and research and development (R&D) in agriculture may also help farmers to improve technical efficiency and productivity in agricultural production.     

FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT,ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY,AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

Financial development might lead to productivity improvement in developing countries. In the present study, based on the Data Envelopment Analysis approach, we use the Malmquist index to measure China's total factor productivity change and its two components (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). We find that China has recorded an increase in total factor productivity from 1993 to 2001, and that productivity growth was mostly attributed to technical progress, rather than to improvement in efficiency. Moreover, using panel dataset covering 29 Chinese provinces over the period from 1993 to 2001 and applying the Generalized Method of Moment system estimation, we investigate the impact of financial development on productivity growth in China. Empirical results show that, during this period, financial development has significantly contributed to China's productivity growth, mainly through its favorable effect on efficiency.     

中国省际高技术产业创新效率评价研究——基于超效率DEA模型和Malmquist指数法

基于中国29个省区市2014-2018年高技术产业的面板数据,首先采用超效率DEA模型对各省市生产效率进行测算,进而构建DEA-Malmquist模型对各省市综合生产率指数进行计算和分解.结果表明:中国高技术产业创新效率的总体水平较高,但是超过一半的省市区要素投入结构不合理,而且主要分布在中部和西部地区,创新效率存在较大的区域差异;中国高技术产业的全要素生产率指数平均值大于1,很多省份存在规模效率不高的问题,导致创新效率呈现N型的回调震动形态,技术进步和技术效率是全要素生产率提高的主要动力.因此,为了进一步提高我国高技术产业创新效率,需要注意保持高技术产业的技术水平和技术效率,尤其要注重高技术产业科技资源的优化配置,提升高技术产业创新资源的管理水平.     

Population dynamics and economic growth in China

This paper focuses on two major elements of China's population dynamics—the rising proportion of workers in the population and the shift of rural workers from agriculture into industry and services—in a provincial-level analysis of per capita income and productivity growth during the last three decades. We measure the ‘mechanical’ contributions of these dynamics to per capita income as revealed by growth decompositions, before assessing the determinants of per capita income and productivity growth in a series of regressions that include the growth of the working-age to total population (WAP) ratio and a measure of sectoral employment change. Our results indicate that sectoral change has made a significant positive contribution to both per capita income growth and aggregate productivity growth, stemming from its positive impact on agricultural productivity growth—as predicted by the Lewisian dual economy model. However, the negative impact of sectoral change on productivity growth in the industrial and service sectors, combined with the negative impact of growth of the WAP ratio on both per capita income and aggregate productivity growth, suggests that the benefits of China's population dynamics during the last three decades have been overstated.     

Competitiveness of China's Manufacturing Industry and its Impacts on the Neighbouring Countries

This paper investigates the rapid growth of China's share in the international commodity market and the structural changes of China's commodity exports. It demonstrates a significant improvement of international competitiveness in China's manufacturing sector. The panel data analysis, based on a Solow–Swan type growth model on China's 37 manufacturing industries from 1991 to 2002, reveals that the main sources of the strengthened competitiveness of China's manufacturing sector have been mainly from Total Factor Productivity (TFP), while labour productivity has been increasing and capital productivity has been falling. A preliminary empirical analysis on the impacts of China's increasing competitiveness finds that there are negative correlations between China and most of its neighbouring countries, both newly industrialised economies and other Southeast Asian developing economies. However, there is no evidence of negative impacts of China's increasing competitiveness on developed countries such as the United States and Japan.     

Balance sheet expansion and economic growth in China: Crowd in or crowd out?

Balance sheet expansion is crucial to understand the historic path, current slowdown and future trend of economic growth in China. As the financial system transforms national savings into investment, balance sheet expands simultaneously. According to changing impacts of balance sheet expansion on real economy, economic growth in China from 1998 to 2016 can be divided into the crowd-in stage and the crowd-out stage. In the first stage (1998–2007), balance sheet expansion crowded China's real economy in, raised TFP dramatically and accelerated economic growth. In the second stage (2008–2016), balance sheet expansion crowded China's real economy out, with stagnant TFP and decelerated economic growth. Balance sheet expansion has slowed down since 2014, but it continues to exert crowding out effects on China's real economy. We argue that balance sheet expansion is crucial for China's future economic growth. In the long term, structural reforms, especially reforms in the financial system, could increase growth potential significantly. In the short term, financial system reforms should focus on generating sufficient cash flows to boost aggregate demand.     

中国装备制造业全要素生产率增长的分解:1998-2009——基于省际面板数据的研究

本文采用超越对数的随机前沿生产函数和1998-2009年的省际面板数据,测算了中国各地区装备制造业的全要素生产率(TFP)增长率,并从技术进步、技术效率变化、规模效率变化、配置效率变化四个方面对中国装备制造业全要素生产率变化的特点进行了分析。经验结果表明,样本期间内,全国以及东、中、西部地区装备制造业的TFP都有所增长,其增速皆呈现出先增后减再增的趋势;TFP增长对全国装备制造业产出增长的贡献率相对较低,仅为0.117。对TFP增长的分解发现,技术进步已成为中国装备制造业TFP增长的主要源泉,配置效率和规模效率恶化则严重阻碍了中国装备制造业TFP水平的提高。分地区来看,中部地区的TFP增长率最高,东部次之,西部最低,这主要是由于西部地区装备制造业要素配置效率的下降最为严重,东部地区规模效率的下降最为严重。     

Productivity growth in Indonesian agriculture, 1961–2000

This paper uses an index number approach to measure total factor productivity (TFP) growth in Indonesian crop and livestock agriculture from 1961 to 2000. Tornqvist-Theil chain-weighted indices of output, input and TFP are developed to minimise biases that may result from relative changes in input and output price aggregation weights. The results indicate that agricultural TFP growth accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s but stagnated in the 1990s. Without new efforts to increase productivity in agriculture, Indonesia's goal of using agricultural growth to generate broad-based rural development and further reduce poverty may be undermined.     

Knowledge economy and industry performance in China: a provincial level analysis

ABSTRACT

We construct a framework for investigating the effects of knowledge on industry performance. Using Chinese provincial industry data from 2000 to 2012, we decompose total factor productivity (TFP) change into the four components of embodied technical change, disembodied technical change, scale efficiency change, and technical efficiency change. Our results show a considerably stronger positive effect of advanced knowledge on production technology than of basic knowledge. International knowledge spillovers, particularly trade-induced spillovers, are more effective in inducing TFP growth than domestic spillovers. Our analysis further illustrates a discrepancy in TFP growth rates between regions, and we find TFP of the Central and West Region to be catching-up with the East Region. On average, scale efficiency change is the major contributing factor to regional disparities in TFP change. We discuss several policy implications of our results.

Abbreviation: Advanced knowledge (ADV); Share of agriculture (AGR); Basic knowledge (BAS); Chinese Industrial Census (CIC); Data envelopment analysis (DEA); Disembodied technical change (DTC); Embodied technical change (ETC); Foreign direct investment (FDI); Gross domestic product (GDP); Population density (POD); Scale efficiency change (SEC); Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA); International spillovers from foreign countries (SPF); Cross-sectoral external knowledge spillovers within China (SPH); Neutral technical change (TC); Technical efficiency (TE); Technical efficiency change (TEC); Total factor productivity (TFP); International trade (TRD); Degree of urbanization (URB)     

Does market-oriented reform increase energy rebound effect? Evidence from China's regional development

The actual energy savings from efficiency improvement may be less than expectations because of behavior response of micro-units, which is named as rebound effect. For producers, the magnitude of such response depends on the operating flexibility. However, the precise; role of operating flexibility in rebound effect is still unknown because of difficulties in measuring operating flexibility. Over the past four decades, the Chinese government has implemented a wide range of reforms aiming at market-oriented transition, which increase operating flexibility of micro-units. It is natural to be questioned whether China's market-oriented reform increases energy rebound effect. In this study, we aim to explore the impacts of marketization on rebound effect. Using partially linear functional-coefficient panel data model to avoid prior criteria in model specification and smooth the change of rebound effect across regions, we found that about 20% of originally expected energy conservation from energy efficiency improvement would be rebounded in 2013. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that in line with China's uneven reform across regions, coastal provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Tianjin, Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong, have larger rebound effects, which may be connected with their larger operating flexibility. The findings can enhance our understanding on the mechanisms of rebound effect as behavior responses. We also anticipate our paper to provide knowledge and broader implications toward optimal policy designs alongside China's ongoing market-oriented reforms.     

R＆D,Human Capital Investment and Productivity： Firm-level Evidence from China＇s Electronics Industry

Usingfirm-level panel data covering 2005-2007, the present paper examines the effects of R＆D and human capital investment on productivity in China＇s electronics industry. It is found that both R＆D and on-the-job training positively contribute to total factor productivity （TFP）. Firms＇ investment inemployees＇ health insurance andpensions, whichare components of workers＇ compensation, generate a productivity-enhancing effect, supporting the efficiency wage hypothesis. The estimated impact of R＆D on productivity varies among different forms of ownership, and foreign-owncd enterprises experience higher R＆D efficiency than state or private enterprises. After controlling for potential endogenous causality between TFP and R＆D, the above findings remain unchanged We also find that on-the-job training can improve the quality of human capital and is helpful in promoting productivity. Therefore, establishing indigenous technological capability through various technological sources is quite important, and the government should devote further effort to investing in human capital.     

Does Property Rights Reform Improve the Efficiency of China＇s State-owned Banks？

China ＂s state-owned banks have undergone radical changes over the past two decades, including partial privatization and listing in both the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. This paper evaluates the effects of these changes by analyzing the efficiency of Chinese banks over the period 1998-2012 using two frontier techniques and comparative analysis. The findings suggest that the performance and technical efficiency of the Big Four banks improved considerably after property rights reform, but this improvement is not sufficient to keep the banks at the production frontier. Tobit regressions confirm that static ownership effects are negative but that the property rights reform has had significant and positive effects on the technical efficiency of state-owned commercial banks. GDP growth and the financial crisis have had positive effects on the efficiency of Chinese banks, which is more significant for joint stock commercial banks than state-owned commercial banks. The results indicate the value of ownership reforms of state-owned asset management companies and insurance companies and the establishment of a countercyclical capital buffer.     

技术进步、规模效应与银行效率变化

本文采用MalmquistTFP指数法,对国内主要商业银行1995—2008年全要素生产率（TFP）进行测算和分解,考察国内银行业改革发展过程中技术进步、规模效应与银行效率变化之间的关系。经验结果显示,1996—2002年期间国内商业银行垒要素生产率呈现衰退状况,其中技术变动指数和规模效率变动指数总体下降,可能在于这段时期内宏观经济环境及调控政策的变动。2003—2008年期间全要素生产率呈现总体好转,主要来源于技术进步及规模效率改善,国有银行股份制改造、加入WTO开放银行业等一系列制度变革举措产生了重要的促进作用;股份制银行的金要素生产率变化指数总体高于国有银行,主要得益于其技术进步的作用。国有银行的规模效率变化指数相对较高,因而在技术效率改进方面表现更佳,充分体现其规模优势。     

Rural–urban income disparity: impact of growth,allocative efficiency,and local growth welfare

Historical data of economic development suggest a Kuznets–Williamson type of relationship between economic growth and income disparity. Using China's provincial data, we first try to determine to what extent such a relationship is valid in the urban–rural disparity context. Next, we identify some factors other than economic growth that might have affected urban–rural disparity. In particular, we calculate and compare the inter-sector gross allocation effect (GAE) at the provincial level to discern the impact of labor mobility and allocative efficiency on urban–rural disparity. We also try to evaluate the contribution of local governance to urban–rural disparity by looking into regional differences in effectiveness of economic growth to raise local standard of living. Policy implications of the findings are discussed in the light of China's institutional reforms and development strategies.     

中国高校科研活动全要素生产率研究

以2006—2015年中国高校科研的基础研究类、应用研究类和试验发展类的相关数据为基础,运用DEA-Malmquist指数方法测算了以上三种科研活动全要素生产率（TFP）,并根据其波动情况进行分析。结果显示,第一,基础研究类TFP呈下降趋势,应用研究类和试验发展类TFP呈上升趋势;第二,技术进步率成为影响三种科研活动TFP提高的关键因素,中国有大于五成的省区不能有效、全面地提高三种科研活动TFP;第三,以数据支撑将中国科研能力的分布情况划分为“一类区域”、“二类区域”、“三类区域”、“四类区域”。并针对本文得出的结论提出了相应的建议和对策。