Does Computer Usage Change Farmers Production and Consumption? Evidence from China

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of using computer to obtain information on the farm household s production and consumption, based on a field survey of farm households in northern China. The most important methods applied are instrumental variable (IV) method and propensity score matching (PSM). Estimators of IV, PSM and NNM(nearest neighborhood matching approaches are considered together to check the robustness of empirical results. This article carful impact evaluation results suggest that computer usages improves the size of arable land rented-in, but reduces family labor input intensity and the probability of selling agricultural outputs at farm-gate market. They also stimulated transportation, garment, housing and insurance expenditure per capita. First, we directly estimate computer usage impacts on a broader range of production and consumption indicators by including land-relative investments, variable investments, labor input and households expenditure and provide rigorous impact evaluations on the impact of access to computer. Second, we use IV method PSM method to correct self-selection bias, going beyond the single equation approach in other studies. This enables us to identify the causal relationship between computer usage and farmer s production and consumption decisions. Acknowledgement : We are grateftul to the financial support of the China agricultural research system.