Determinants of technical efficiency in post-collective Chinese agriculture: Evidence from farm-level data

The agrarian system of China in the post-collective period is characterized by peasant subsistence and small-scale mixed family farms. Agricultural modernization requires rapid and sustained improvements in levels of output and productivity. Farm-level data of 7927 households sampled from two representative Chinese provinces allow us to formulate and estimate a stochastic frontier production function model that explains a considerable proportion of interfarm efficiency differences and quantifies the efficiency effects of farm size, access to credit, nutrition intake; education attainment, and farming experience. (C) 2000 Academic Press.