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Village democracy and household welfare: evidence from rural China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2017

Ying Xu ,
Gregory S. Amacher  and
Jintao Xu
Ying Xu
Affiliation:
Centre for Global Food and Resources, University of Adelaide, 5.25 Nexus 10, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005 SA, Australia. E-mail: ying.xu03@adelaide.edu.au
Gregory S. Amacher
Affiliation:
Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, USA. E-mail: gamacher@vt.edu
Jintao Xu
Affiliation:
National School of Development, Peking University, China. E-mail: xujt@pku.edu.cn
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Abstract

Village democratization in rural China is found to have profound impacts on many socio-economic aspects, but little is understood as to how welfare impacts may occur through farmers' principal production activities. This study helps to fill this gap by investigating how village democracy affects rural household welfare through these channels, using a unique household survey. The authors first establish a theoretical framework that links democracy to household welfare through changes in production efficiency. Focusing on both agricultural and forest production, they then implement empirical estimation using stochastic production frontier techniques with careful consideration of household heterogeneity in technical efficiency. They find that higher levels of village democracy significantly increase farmers' production efficiency, thereby improving their welfare. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study on the impacts of democracy on producer welfare using micro-level data.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , August 2017 , pp. 351 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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