HOG PRODUCTION IN CHINA: TECHNOLOGICAL BIAS AND FACTOR DEMAND

China's agricultural output has expanded rapidly since the economic reforms of the late 1970s, reflecting both productivity growth and mobilization of inputs. Over the same period, increased consumption of livestock products has been a feature of China's food consumption. Widely different projections of China's demand for feedgrains to feed its expanding livestock sector have motivated this research. Productivity growth is an important component of such projections, but past estimates have been controversial, few focus on livestock, and we are aware of none that examine technological bias in China's livestock production. For example, does the nature of technical progress lead to increased or reduced use of feedgrains relative to other inputs? A feature of China's livestock sector is rapid structural change towards larger and more commercial and intensive production systems. As specialization has developed over the last two decades, the share of backyard livestock production has declined and the shares of specialized households and commercial enterprises have increased. We measure technological change and biases for each of these structures so that this information can be eventually combined with that on structural change when making feedgrain demand projections. Our commodity focus in this paper is on hog production, which is the major consumer of feedgrains in China. We use a translog cost function and adjusted livestock data to estimate technological change and biases. Technical change has not been neutral, and the bias towards feedgrain-saving was found to be statistically significant. We also find that the demand for feedgrains is elastic with respect to its own price and that strong substitution relationships exist with respect to some other inputs. Thus input price changes are important, along with technological biases, in changing the feedgrain input shares to hog production.Production Economics,

PROJECTIONS OF DAIRY PRODUCT CONSUMPTION AND TRADE OPPORTUNITIES IN CHINA

China has been rapidly increasing its consumption and imports of dairy products in recent years. A two-stage demand system was estimated for livestock product consumption in urban China over the 1990s. Total expenditure elasticities for the livestock commodity group and expenditure elasticities for dairy products within the livestock commodity group were calculated. The results suggest that dairy products, even in urban areas, remain luxury goods because of a high expenditure elasticity (1.26). Due to rapidly increasing consumption and the likelihood of inadequate supply growth, China will continue to increase its imports of dairy products to meet its domestic demand. Projections imply that China's imports of dairy products may approach 30 percent of its total domestic consumption by 2005. Due to differences in regional income and population growth rates, increases in dairy products consumption may occur especially in central and coastal areas, where potential trade opportunities may exist.Consumer/Household Economics,

LIVESTOCK PRODUCT CONSUMPTION PATTERNS IN URBAN AND RURAL CHINA

Chinese livestock products consumption behavior was analysed for both urban and rural households using a complete regional consumption dataset. Six livestock product expenditure share equations were estimated with an extended AIDS model. The results suggest that Chinese consumers will continue to increase their consumption of livestock products, but consumption patterns have changed in the 1990s. A large percentage of household livestock product expenditure is still on pork. However, the shares for beef, dairy products and poultry consumption will increase substantially. As a consequence the pork expenditure share will be gradually reduced as incomes grow and diet preferences change in both urban and rural households. There are significant differences in livestock product consumption preferences across provinces of China. As a result, studies that omit regional dummy variables in their demand systems can produce different expenditure and price parameters, which should be interpreted with caution.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Livestock in China: Commodity specific total factor productivity decomposition using new panel data

Studies of total factor productivity in livestock production are rare, but when available provide useful information especially in the context of developing countries such as China where livestock is becoming more important in the domestic agricultural economy. We estimate total factor productivity (TFP) for four major livestock products in China employing the stochastic frontier approach, and decompose productivity growth into its technical efficiency and technical progress components. Efforts are made to adjust and augment the available livestock statistics. The results show that growth in TFP and its components varied between the 1980s and the 1990s as well as over production structures. While there is evidence of considerable technical innovation in China's livestock sector, technical efficiency improvement has been relatively slow.Stochastic production frontier, total factor productivity, technical efficiency and progress, China, livestock, adjusted panel data, Livestock Production/Industries, D240, Q100, Q160,

Chinese animal product consumption in the 1990s

Chinese animal product consumption behaviour was analysed for both urban and rural households using a complete regional consumption dataset that was augmented to include away‐from‐home consumption. Seven animal product expenditure share equations were estimated with an extended Almost Ideal Demand System model. The results suggest that Chinese consumers will continue to increase their consumption of animal products, but that consumption patterns have changed in the 1990s. A large percentage of household animal product expenditure is still on pork. However, the shares for aquatic and poultry products consumption will increase substantially. As a consequence, the pork expenditure share will be gradually reduced as incomes grow and diet preferences change in both urban and rural households. There are significant differences in animal product consumption preferences across regions of China. As a result, studies that omit regional dummy variables in their demand systems can produce different expenditure and price parameters. The present paper also found that many of the estimates of elasticities and marginal expenditure shares would be rather different if the data ignored consumption away from home.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Invertibility in groupoid C*-algebras

Given a second-countable, Hausdorff, \'etale, amenable groupoid G with compact unit space, we show that an element a in C*(G) is invertible if and only if \lambda_x(a) is invertible for every x in the unit space of G, where \lambda_x refers to the "regular representation" of C*(G) on l_2(G_x). We also prove that, for every a in C*(G), there exists some x in G^{(0)} such that ||a|| = ||\lambda_x(a)||.Comment: 8 page

LIVESTOCK PRODUCTIVITY IN CHINA: DATA REVISION AND TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY DECOMPOSITION

Studies of total factor productivity in livestock production are rare, but when available provide useful information especially in the context of developing countries such as China where livestock is becoming more important in the domestic agricultural economy. We estimate total factor productivity (TFP) for four major livestock products in China and by employing the random coefficient frontier approach, decompose productivity growth into its technical efficiency and technical progress components. Efforts were made to adjust and augment the available livestock statistics. The results show that growth in TFP and its components varied between the 1980s and the 1990s as well as over production structures. While there is evidence of considerable technical innovation in China's livestock sector, technical efficiency improvement was relatively slow.Random coefficient approach, total factor productivity, technical efficiency and progress, China, livestock., Q100, Q160, Productivity Analysis, D240,

Livestock in China: Commodity-specific Total Factor Productivity Decomposition Using New Panel Data

Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,

Chinese Dairy Farm Performance and Policy Implications in the New Millennium

China has significantly expanded its dairy cow numbers and increased its dairy processing capacity over the last five year in an attempt to meet increased demand for dairy products. China’s net imports of dairy products, however, has expanded at a growth rate in excess of 30% during the same period. To consider why China is still struggling to meet rising dairy product demand in China in the new millennium, this paper employs a new set of farm-level survey data and stochastic input distance functions to empirically estimate Total factor Productivity (TFP) on China’s dairy farms. The results show that the TFP growth has been positive on and this rise in productivity has been mostly driven by technological change. However, the new results show that on average, the same farms have been behind the advancing technical frontier. We also find one of the drivers of the dairy farms’ productivity advances is the relatively robust rate of technological change. The results suggest that efforts to achieve increased adoption of new technologies and better advice on how to use the technologies and manage production and marketing within the dairy farm sector, will likely further increase TFP growth in China.Distance Function; Total Factor Productivity; Technical Inefficiency; Dairy Farms

Detection of ultra-high resonance contrast in vapor cell atomic clocks

We propose and demonstrate a novel detection scheme of clock signals and obtain an ultra-high resonance contrast above 90%. The precision of the signal's detection and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of atomic clock signal is improved remarkably. The frequency stability in terms of Allan deviation has been improved by an order for the new detection under the equivalent conditions. We also investigate density effect which produces the splitting of the transmission peak and consequently a narrower linewidth of Ramsey fringes.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure