Does Agricultural investment still promote economic growth in China? Empirical evidence from ARDL bounds testing model

One of the major unresolved research issues in agriculture is the question as to whether agricultural investments still a promoter of economic growth at the regional and local levels. The concern is not with the agricultural benefits, principally measured as food security, but whether there are additional development benefits from these investments. In this paper, we have developed a new approach to study the impact of agricultural investment on economic growth. By taking the case of China, this study is based on the Auto-Regressive Distributive Lags (ARDL) approach that is proposed by Pesaran et al (2002). The empirical estimate yields interesting results. In the short and long terms, agricultural investment has a positive effect on economic growth. The findings of this research have important implications for further policy designs that seek to maintain the agricultural sector in China in the future.