Estimating crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture: a generalized maximum entropy approach

A generalized maximum entropy approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture. Despite a modest behavioral assumption about equal marginal returns of nonland inputs among crops, this method does not require price information, which is usually...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zhang, Xiaobo, Fan, Shenggen
Formato: Journal Article
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Wiley 2001
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155822
Descripción
Sumario:A generalized maximum entropy approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture. Despite a modest behavioral assumption about equal marginal returns of nonland inputs among crops, this method does not require price information, which is usually distorted in a centrally planned economy such as China. A multi-output technology for Chinese agriculture is estimated and input allocations for each province are recovered simultaneously. The estimated multi-output production technology and input allocations imply that China may have greater grain production potentials than previously thought.