Tractor vs. animal: Rural reforms and technology adoption in China

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chen, Shuo; Lan, Xiaohuan
• 署名单位: Fudan University; Fudan University; Fudan University; Fudan University; Shanghai Institute of International Finance & Economics
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102536
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: agriculture; Land reform; CHINA; TECHNOLOGY; property rights; farm size

摘要

Better institutions do not always advance technologies. China's rural reforms during the early 1980s secured land tenure for peasants and dismantled large collective farms into small household farms, which transformed tillage technology. Using a novel data set of 1755 counties from 1976 to 1988, our event study exploits the county-by-county rollout of the reform. We find that the use of tractors plummeted after the reform, while the use of draft animals surged. Post-reform tractor use was more suitable to local factor endowments and farm size. Small tractors became more popular while the number of large tractors declined.