规模经济、规模报酬与农业适度规模经营——基于我国粮食生产的实证研究

有关规模经营的问题一直是学术界和政府部门关注的热点问题之一。本文基于一个随机抽样的来自我国粮食主产区5省100个村庄1049个农户的实地调查数据,分别从投入产出和生产成本两个不同的角度全面考察了我国主要粮食作物品种生产规模经济的存在性。实证研究表明,在考虑土地细碎化的影响后,我国粮食生产总体上而言规模报酬不变。由此可见,如果政府单纯出于提高粮食产量的目的而大规模推行规模经营的政策显然是不可取的。同时发现,除粳稻外,扩大土地经营规模对单位产量生产总成本均有显著的负面影响。而在其他条件不变的情况下,成本降低与经济效益提高实质上是一致的。因此,农业经营规模的扩大有利于促进农民增收。

Economies of Scale,Returns to Scale and the Problem of Optimum-scale Farm Management: An Empirical Study Based on Grain Production in China

The issues of scale of operation have been one of the hottest topics,which are concerned by the academics and policy-makers. In the paper,empirical studies have shown that taking the effect of land fragmentation into account,there are almost no significant economies of scale in China’s grain production. So,the large-scale land management policy, which considered just from promoting grain output angle,is undesirable. It is also found that,except Japonica rice,the land scale management has a significant negative impact on the total cost in production. That means the expansion of land scale could reduce the cost of production. In fact,given other conditions unchanged,due to the existence of economies of scale,cost reduction is essentially consistent with economic efficiency. So from this perspective,the expansion of the scale of agricultural operation is conducive to the promotion of farmer’s income.