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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 97 No. 4 1989

The Impact of China's Economic Reforms on Agricultural Productivity Growth

John McMillan; John Whalley; Lijing Zhu

Abstract

This paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post-1978 increase in China's agricultural productivity. Data on post-1978 Chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three-quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases. The authors also use their method to calculate incentive indices, giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre-1978 regime.

DOI
10.1086/261628
Volume
97
Issue
4
Pages
781-807
Language
en
Sources
crossref openalex

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