Essays on economic returns to fertilizer, market structure of milk industry, and air pollution and food security in China

Over the past four decades, China has made fruitful achievements in agricultural development, which attracted a great deal of attention within the academy. Meanwhile, Chinese agriculture has also undergone dramatic and continuing structural changes (Chen et al. 2009; Cao and Birchenall 2013), including the spatiotemporal change in crop patterns at the farm stage (Xin et al. 2012) and the structural change in food markets (Qian et al. 2011; Kong 2012). These changes will, no doubt, have impacts on food security, which is essential for political stability and social equity of the country. In ...