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

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  • Chen, Shuo
  • Lan, Xiaohuan

Abstract

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.

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  • Chen, Shuo & Lan, Xiaohuan, 2020. "Tractor vs. animal: Rural reforms and technology adoption in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:147:y:2020:i:c:s0304387820301115
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102536
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agriculture; Land reform; China; Technology; Property rights; Farm size;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

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