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Do ICTs Boost Agricultural Productivity?
Zhu Qiubo (朱秋博)1, Bai Junfei (白军飞)2, 3*, Peng Chao (彭超)4 and Zhu Chen (朱晨)1
1 College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
2 Beijing Food Safety Policy and Strategy Research Base, Beijing, China
3 National Agricultural and Rural Development Research Institute, China Agricultural University
4 Research Center for Rural Economy, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Beijing, China
Abstract: Based on panel data from the Rural Fixed Point Survey of the Ministry of Agriculture over the period 2004-2016 and supplementary survey data on information and communications technology (ICT) applications in the countryside, this paper employs the difference in differences (DID) method to analyze the effects of ICT applications on rural households’ agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) with mobile phone signal, internet and 3G mobile network connections as indicators, and decomposes and evaluates the constituent factors. Our findings reveal a positive effect of ICTs on rural households’ TFP, which primarily stemmed from rising agricultural technical efficiency. However, ICTs exerted no significant effect on agricultural technical progress during this paper’s data period due to limited rural human capital. These findings are consistent with robustness test results based on counterfactual and matching methods.
Keywords: ICT applications, agricultural total factor productivity (TFP), agricultural technical progress, agricultural technical efficiency
JEL Classification Codes: D24, Q12, Q16
DOI: 10.19602/j.chinaeconomist.2020.11.02
