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Estimating Crop‐Specific Production Technologies in Chinese Agriculture: A Generalized Maximum Entropy Approach
Author(s) -
Zhang Xiaobo,
Fan Shenggen
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1111/0002-9092.00163
Subject(s) - chinese agriculture , production (economics) , china , agriculture , economics , agricultural engineering , agricultural economics , entropy (arrow of time) , crop production , econometrics , marginal product , mathematics , microeconomics , geography , engineering , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
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.