Short supply chain, technical efficiency, and technological change: Insights from cucumber production

This study examines the impact of participation in short supply chains (SSCs) on technical efficiency (TE) and technological change (TC) in cucumber production in China, using data for the period 2011–2016. The meta‐frontier model and the two‐stage residual inclusion approach are utilized to examine the association between SSC participation, comparable TE, and TC. Accounting for selection bias, we show that SSC participation significantly decreased the comparable TE of cucumber production but accelerated TC. The disaggregated analysis reveals that the comparable TE for SSC participants was generally smaller than that for nonparticipants. Furthermore, comparable TE for nonparticipants consistently increased year‐over‐year, whereas, for SSC participants, it increased during some years and decreased during others. Last but not least, TC for both SSC participants and nonparticipants increased over time

Up-regulation of bone marrow stromal protein 2 (BST2) in breast cancer with bone metastasis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Bone metastases are frequent complications of breast cancer. Recent literature implicates multiple chemokines in the formation of bone metastases in breast cancer. However, the molecular mechanism of metastatic bone disease in breast cancer remains unknown. We have recently made the novel observation of the BST2 protein expression in human breast cancer cell lines. The purpose of our present study is to investigate the expression and the role of BST2 in bone metastatic breast cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>cDNA microarray analysis was used to compare the BST2 gene expression between a metastatic to bone human breast cancer cell line (MDA-231BO) and a primary human breast cancer cell line (MDA-231). The BST2 expression in one bone metastatic breast cancer and seven non-bone metastatic breast cancer cell lines were also determined using real-time RT-PCR and Western blot assays. We then employed tissue array to further study the BST2 expression in human breast cancer using array slides containing 20 independent breast cancer tumors that formed metastatic bone lesions, 30 non-metastasis-forming breast cancer tumors, and 8 normal breast tissues. In order to test the feasibility of utilizing BST2 as a serum marker for the presence of bone metastasis in breast cancer, we had measured the BST2 expression levels in human serums by using ELISA on 43 breast cancer patients with bone metastasis, 43 breast cancer patients without bone metastasis, and 14 normal healthy controls. The relationship between cell migration and proliferation and BST2 expression was also studied in a human breast recombinant model system using migration and FACS analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The microarray demonstrated over expression of the BST2 gene in the bone metastatic breast cancer cell line (MDA-231BO) compared to the primary human breast cancer cell line (MDA-231). The expression of the BST2 gene was significantly increased in the bone metastatic breast cancer cell lines and tumor tissues compared to non-bone metastatic breast cancer cell lines and tumor tissues by real time RT-PCR, Western blot and TMA. Furthermore, serum levels of BST2 measured by ELISA were also significantly higher among patients with breast cancer metastatic to bone compared to breast cancer patients without metastatic to bone (P < .0001). Most importantly, the breast cancer cell line that transfected with BST2 demonstrated increased BST2 expressions, which was associated with increased cancer cell migration and cell proliferation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results provide novel data indicating the BST2 protein expression is associated with the formation of bone metastases in human breast cancer. We believe that BST2 may be a potential biomarker in breast cancer with bone metastasis.</p

Collective action of smallholder farmers in “Big” market participation: Contract enforcement of cooperative members

The commitment of the members is a necessary condition for the survival of the cooperative. The lower commitment of the members directly reduces the economies of scale of the cooperative and becomes an important reason for the failure of many cooperatives. This paper uses the survey data of 672 cooperative members in Shandong and Shaanxi provinces to analyze the influence of five types of factors on the members' commitments: the organization structure, governance mechanism, member characteristics, operating characteristics, and external environment. Through the survey, it is found that the current cooperatives face the dilemma of lower overall level of commitment of the members in the development process. The proportion of the products of the respondents to the cooperatives is only 62%, and the rest are sold to third parties other than the cooperatives. The results of the econometric analysis show that the level of commitment of the members is mainly affected by the size of cooperative members, whether there are price spillovers, whether or not they participate in cooperative decision-making, the number of years of education for the head of the household, the existence of financial constraints, production scale, sales experience, and whether or not the family members have non-agricultural employment channels. Time of participation, distance to the cooperative, fairness of the market, and influence of the region, but not the age of the householder, the heterogeneity of the cooperative members, whether the cooperatives supervise the sales behavior of the members, and whether the cooperatives communicate with the members regularly. (via Google translate

Does participation in poverty alleviation programmes increase subjective well-being? Results from a survey of rural residents in Shanxi, China

Government programme interventions that improve rural settlements are expected to foster human development. Although existing studies have shown that rural dwellers can economically benefit from programme participation, relatively little is known about whether their subjective well-being has improved. To shed new insights, in this study, we estimate the impact of participation in China’s targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) programme on subjective well-being using survey data from 542 rural dwellers collected from poverty-stricken areas in China. A second-order confirmatory factor analysis model was applied to obtain a comprehensive measurement of subjective well-being by utilising four commonly used measurement scales. The results show that TPA participants do not manifest significantly different subjective well-being compared to their non-participant counterparts. The subjective well-being of rural dwellers is positively influenced by age, marital status, dependency ratio, and income, but negatively influenced by illness. Rural dwellers’ TPA programme participation is positively associated with gender, illness, and farmland size, but negatively correlated with education, marital status, and dependency ratio

The adoption and impact of E-commerce in rural China: Application of an endogenous switching regression model

Rural e-commerce is embraced as an opportunity for economic advancement for farmers in developing countries. However, little empirical evidence has been presented about the factors that affect farmers' decisions to adopt e-commerce, and how much farmers benefit from as well as cost on the adoption. This study addresses this research gap by analyzing rural household data collected in the Shandong, Henan and Shaanxi provinces of China in 2019, utilizing an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model to address the self-selection bias issue. The empirical results show that education level, smartphone use, off-farm employment and social capital significantly impact farmers' decisions to adopt e-commerce. E-commerce adoption drives a significant increase in selling price; yet simultaneously causes a tremendous increase in marketing costs for farmers. The operation of e-commerce requires farmers to pay considerable costs that were formerly undertaken by intermediaries in conventional exchange transactions. Still, farmers are seen to benefit from adopting e-commerce, as the gross return shows an increase. The PSM approach is employed for the robustness check, which obtains consistent results with the ESR model. The results of the heterogeneous analysis show that the rural households that are located closer to the local township benefit more from the adoption of e-commerce. Overall, this study presents a better understanding of the actual impacts of adopting e-commerce for farmers in rural China, which provides valuable insights for other developing countries or regions that also engage in rural e-commerce to promote the development of rural economy

The effect of cooperative membership on agricultural technology adoption in Sichuan, China

Farmer cooperatives may promote technology adoption in agricultural production, which, in turn, increases crop productivity and farmers' income. However, empirical evidence of how and to what extent cooperatives facilitate the technology adoption extensity, defined as the number of technologies adopted by a farmer from a wide range of agricultural technologies, remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we examine the impact of cooperative membership on the technology adoption extensity using cross-sectional data collected from 413 farm households in Sichuan province of China. We use propensity score matching combined with an instrumental variable approach to address the sample selection bias associated with voluntary cooperative membership choice. The statistical results suggest that cooperative membership has a positive effect on the technology adoption extensity when all 13 surveyed technologies are considered. However, the separate analyses on the adoption of production and post-harvest technologies reveal that cooperative membership has an insignificant impact on the number of adopted production technologies, but it significantly increases the number of post-harvest technologies adopted. These empirical findings are in line with the new institutional economics theories and our observations on the ground

Yield effects of agricultural cooperative membership in developing countries: A meta-analysis

This study uses a meta-analysis to synthesize the effects of agricultural cooperative membership on the yield of crops and livestock. It collects 158 estimated yield effects from 42 studies, covering 19 developing countries. Our analysis finds evidence that there exists positive publication bias in the empirical literature, confirming that researchers and journals have a preference to publish articles that report positive and significant results. After correcting for publication bias, we find that cooperative membership has a small-sized and insignificant effect on the yield. The meta-regression analysis reveals that variation in the reported yield effects can be largely explained by the study attributes such as the sample type (full sample vs. subsample), membership ratio, econometric approaches (instrumental-variable based parametric approach, non-parametric approach or ordinary least square regression), effect size types (average treatment effects on the treated, average treatment effects, or coefficient), agro-product type (grain or others), and climate zones (tropical or non-tropical)

Do farmers gain internet dividends from E-commerce adoption? Evidence from China

This study examines the effects of e-commerce adoption on household income, using survey data of 1,030 households in China. The combination of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference method is employed to address the sample selection bias associated with e-commerce adoption. The results show that e-commerce adopters obtain significantly higher income than non-adopters, and such a significant and large income gain is mainly contributed by the significant increase in sales income. E-commerce adoption has a significant and negative impact on wage income due to the labor substitution effect, while it affects transfer income insignificantly. Additional analysis reveals that the income effects of e-commerce adoption are heterogeneous across geographic locations and household-level characteristics