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...

Concerned about national grain self-sufficiency and rural household incomes, in 2004 China announced that it was planning to reverse its longstanding policy of taxing farm households and instead began to provide them with subsidies. Over the past five years, annual announcements have trumpeted...

Great changes have taken place in China’s agricultural and food markets in the past several decades. However, the impact of the transformation brought by modern supply chains on the welfare of farmers in China is unclear. This paper attempts to understand whether or not the recent changes in...

Consumers have increasing demands for product standards. This has important implications for development. This paper develops a formal theory of the process of the introduction of high product standards in developing countries. The model endogenizes the introduction of high standards. Initial...

This paper provides evidence regarding gains to agricultural market liberalization in China. We empirically identify the different effects that incentive reforms and gradual market liberalization have on China's agricultural economy during its transition period. We find that average gains within...

The overall objectives of our proposed paper is to: (a) systematically document the post-reform trends in agricultural performance in Asia, Europe, and the Former Soviet Union; (b) identify the main reform strategies and institutional innovations that have contributed to the successes and...

The paper analyzes the political and institutional factors which are behind the dramatic changes in distortions to agricultural incentives in the transition countries in East Asia (China and Vietnam), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, etc), the rest of the former Soviet Union, and in...