China's Rural Industrialization and Agricultural Mechanization

Rural industrialization provides nonfarm employment opportunities and financial support for farmers and may be a non-negligible cause of agricultural mechanization in China. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on this topic due to challenges in obtaining data and identifying causal relationships. In this paper, we use multiple data sources and construct an instrumental variable based on the number of handicraft production cooperatives in 1957 to test empirically the causal effect of rural industrialization on agricultural mechanization. The results show that rural industrialization contributes significantly and robustly to agricultural mechanization. A 10 percent increase in the average number of industrial enterprises per township was associated with a 1.05 percent increase in the agricultural machinery power per unit area of arable land. Both the demand effect and income effect played crucial roles in the interaction between these two phenomena.     

专业园区高质量发展评价指标体系构建——以金水科教园区为例

专业园区是产业承载的主体，是产业园区实现高质量发展的执行者。对专业园区产业发展的科学评价既可为专业园区本身调整产业结构提供指导，又可为产业园区优化产业布局提供科学依据。基于此，从高质量发展的理念出发，以专业园区为研究对象，设计出面向专业园区的高质量发展一般性评价指标架构，并以金水科教园区为实例，形成具体的高质量发展指标体系。     

Sustainable finance: The role of savings and credit cooperatives in Ecuador

The current world situation leads us to consider that sustainable development needs to be a global priority to ensure the future of the planet and improve the quality of life. There is a need for sustainable finance to support this. Savings and credit cooperatives could help to achieve this impact as they serve the microfinance and microlending market. They facilitate the financial inclusion of the most vulnerable people, most of whom live in rural areas and are members of organizations, such as agricultural cooperatives and associations. Previous studies have focused exclusively on overall profitability, so this paper contributes to extending the literature by analyzing the whole population of savings and credit cooperatives in Ecuador (510 institutions), focusing on their profitability in two ways: the overall profitability necessary for the viability of the business and, in addition, the microcredit portfolio profitability, as a specific measure of its contribution to sustainability and social value creation. Another novelty is that the analysis has been carried out using several machine learning techniques for the wider generalization of the results. These show that size is the most relevant variable for predicting the ROE and that the microcredit portfolio profitability is conditioned by the credit variables.     

农村集体土地存贷合作社的制度经济学分析:彭墩村的案例研究

研究目的:对土地存贷合作社的运作模式和绩效进行分析,为农村集体土地流转制度创新提供新的思路。研究方法:文献资料法,个案分析法。研究结果:土地存贷合作社的制度创新源于当事人对外部利润的追逐以及由此形成的制度创新的同意一致性,制度的成功运行在于其满足农民集体行动的逻辑。研究结论:土地存贷合作社是符合中国农村土地流转制度创新发展方向的一种制度变迁。     

Cross-border cooperation: A response to the challenges facing agri-food cooperatives in Southern European countries

All agri-food cooperatives share common interests, irrespective of their geographical borders, which should encourage them to undertake inter-cooperation processes as well as to set up transnational cooperatives. This paper has two objectives. The first is to analyze Spanish and Portuguese cooperative regulations and the Statute for a European Cooperative Society to define how to embark on these processes in the two countries while also pinpointing the conflicts that may arise from the different regulations. Secondly, it seeks to ascertain which Spanish and Portuguese cooperatives have had experience in this field and to characterize them through a multiple-case study, including the rationale for the processes, the advantages and the constraints. The results have revealed five cross-border cooperation categories and show that the Statute for a European Cooperative Society has not had the expected success at the EU level, due to its complexity. However, in general, the lack of expected cross-border cooperative experiences is not due to legal, language or management issues. It is for different reasons. Firstly, cooperatives think that they can achieve the same objectives through inter-cooperative agreements. Secondly, government policies protect the regional nature of their cooperatives, rather than encouraging them to expand their business and therefore their capacity to respond to current challenges.     

Determinants of technical efficiency and farmers’ crop choice rationality: A case study of rural Gansu,China

Land exchange based on market transactions in which lessors and lessees participate voluntarily not only makes them better off but also enhances the overall efficiency of land use and agricultural production. However, it is worthwhile to empirically explore the effect of land rental on overall technical efficiency in the context of Chinese agriculture because non-farm household producers have increasingly entered the farming business as cultivators. If such producers underperform farm households in terms of efficiency, land consolidation does not necessarily deliver the desired outcome. This study demonstrates that the development of land rental markets improves agricultural technical efficiency at the aggregate level. Another important issue addressed in this study is to examine farmers’ crop choice rationality. China offers an interesting case in this respect. This is because, while the central government has long strived to maintain a high grain self-sufficiency rate, the relative prices of farm products have recently moved in favor of non-grain products. Our empirical result suggests that there is room for further increase in farm revenues of Gansu’s producers by shifting resources away from cereal toward horticultural production.     

农民专业合作社绩效研究进展

农民专业合作社作为一种农村经济的重要组织形式,在促进农业农村发展、增加农民收入上起到了很大作用,但合作社发展良莠不齐,在实际运行过程中存在许多亟须解决的问题。农民专业合作社的效益究竟如何,可以通过组织绩效来研究。通过查阅历年关于农民专业合作社绩效研究的学术文章,发现对合作社绩效这一热点问题的研究处于发展阶段。为此,从农民专业合作社绩效的评价维度、评价方法、影响因素、改进对策4个方面梳理农民专业合作社绩效研究的相关文献,并在此基础上提出了研究展望。