New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) theory posits a complex relationship between migrants and household income generation. This paper uses NELM and original survey data to examine the impacts of migration on income sources in Northeast China. Migration is found to increase farm incomes but...

The paper analyzes the decision-making of rural Chinese households with three alternatives: stay exclusively on farm, take local off-farm jobs, and migrate. Based on a survey of rural Chinese households, we extend the dynamic discrete choice model of Wooldridge (2002a,b) to a trichotomous...

Migration is widely known as one of the main ways of alleviating poverty in developing countries, including China. However, migration itself is not costless. In recent years, there is an emerging concern about the effect of migration on the educational achievement of the children of migrants in...

The overall goal of our paper is to understand the impact that irrigation investments in China have had on incomes, in general, and income and poverty alleviation in poor areas, in particular. The paper seeks to meet three objectives. First, we describe the relationship among irrigation status,...

The emergence of biofuels has led to an increase in crop price and subsequently global food prices but the extent of the impact is subject to debate. Fully understanding the role of biofuels on agricultural markets requires properly accounting for the response of all affected inputs and outputs....

This paper first identifies an interesting pattern in farm household livestock production in many developing countries: an inverted-U shape relationship between household livestock production and the levels of economic development (or farm household income). Using backyard hog production as a...

This study evaluates the off-farm labor response of rural households participating in the Grain for Green program in China, the largest conservation set-aside program in the developing world. Using a panel data set that we designed and implemented, we examine the impact of the program on changes...

Since 1999, China has pursued one of the most ambitious conservation set-aside program's, known as Grain for Green. The overall goal of our paper is to analyze this program's cost-effectiveness and sustainability. We find that while the program has made a clear attempt to retire land that has...

Faced with the task of reorganizing the largest agricultural research system in the world, officials in China are developing a strategy for reform. This paper investigates economies of scale and scope and other potential sources of improvements in the economic efficiency of crop breeding, an...