China Agricultural Mechanization In The Context Of Urbanization:From The Perspective Cross-regional Service

The agricultural mechanization happened in China in the recent 20 years can be viewed as a condense version of agricultural mechanization in U.S.from the beginning of 19th century to the middle of 20th century.Unfortunately,the theoretical explanation provided by current literatures about agriculture technology progress are superficial and stereotyped.Through the in-depth analysis of cross-regional agricultural mechanization service and Chinese unique agriculture resources and urbanization history,the dissertation tried to provide theoretical and empirical answers to the following 3 key questions:(1)Why China,as a country endowed with too many people but too little land,can develop agricultural mechanization with success?(2)The agricultural mechanization in China has transformed form small-scale to large-scale,but which force leads to the change?(3)Is there spatial spillover effect of cross-regional service,and what's its spatial distribution,and how can it be integrated into the unique agricultural production condition and geographical characters in China?In brief,the dissertation is to answer why agricultural mechanization could happen?Why happens now?How was it achieved?And what's its impact?The answers to the above questions can be sumerized as the major conclusions of the dissertation:(1)As to why and why now agricultural mechanization could happen,the basic view of this dissertation is that it happened in a larger economic development context,which was urbanization and non-agricultural employment.Empirical results in the macro level revealed that in the short run competitive relation exsited because of scarcity of resource,but in the long run they reinforced each other by migration of surplus laborforce in agriculture sector.Empirical result in the macro level proved that expenditure on agricultural machinery increased when labor migrated to non-agricultural sector.(2)As to how it happened,the dissertation used club theory and pointed out the essence of cross-regional agricultural mechanization service was that agricultural machinery has evolved to the club goods in China.China is a large country with vast land,and the production time span for different regions can be sufficient enough for machinery to service cross-regionally,which ensures the number of club member.Meanwhile,China has excellent infrastructure such as roads,which reduces the marginal cost of the members.There is no other country with such vast area,excellent basic infrasture and fragmented land as China,that's why it is hard for other developing countries to imitate Chinese agricultural mechanization mode.(3)As to what's its impact,the dissertation points out that as a unique way to achieve agricultural mechanization,cross-regional service has substantially affect grain production in China,and it is a manifestation of division of labor and specialization in agriculture.Further,the dissertation argues that spatial spillover effect can be achieved as a result of cross-regional services,which means that the effect of mechanization can not only influence local grain output,but also regions around it.The hypothesis is testified by empirical results.In the summery,the dissertation begins with facts,then theoretize and modelize the fact,and at last goes back from theories to facts by empirical analysis.In this process,the understandings of the facts are deepened.The innovations may be as follows:Innovation in research perspective:(1)non-agricultural employment is a fact in industrialization and urbanization,but this dissertation argues that it is division of labor not only between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors,but also within the agricultural sector.As labor migration,specialized mechanization service emerged,which was the major source of mechanization in Chinese agriculture in the last 10 years.(2)This dissertation pointed out that spatial spillover effect of agricultural mechanization may existed as a result of large scale cross-regional service,and used scientific methods to measure it.(3)Even though some studies realized the unique pattern of agricultural mechanization in China,they just illustrated the facts superficially without a structure of mainstream economic model,so they could not systematically understand the mechanism of the facts and influences of exogenous shocks.This dissertation applied club theory in the field of Public Economics to explain the reason why the user and owner of agricultural machinery separate,and why small rural households and large machineries can co-exist,and points out the cross-regional service is the result of Chinese unique institutional arrangement and resources.Innovation in research methods:(1)This dissertation used spatial econometric method to analyze spatial spillover effect of agricultural mechanization on cereal output,which is new in the current study.(2)This dissertation used large sampled micro-data to study the relation between urbanization and agricultural mechanization,and considered hysteresis effect in the model design,which can separate short run and long run,so a deeper understandings of the relation can be revealed.