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Series Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- 1 History of Chinese Agriculture Before Reform and Opening -- 1.1 Three Thousand Years of Agriculture in China -- 1.1.1 The Origins of Agriculture -- 1.1.2 The Development of Agriculture -- 1.1.2.1 Farmland Improvements -- 1.1.2.2 Improvements to Farming Techniques -- 1.1.2.3 Farming Implement Improvements -- 1.1.2.4 Compliance with Farming Seasons -- 1.1.3 Agricultural Achievements -- 1.1.4 Characteristics of Agriculture -- 1.2 The Last 300 Years of Agriculture in China -- 1.2.1 A Stage of Continued Slow Growth in Agriculture -- 1.2.2 Why Agriculture Did Not Cause Economic Decline in China -- 1.2.2.1 China Still Possessed Comparative Advantages in Agriculture During This Period -- 1.2.2.2 Limited Disparities in Chinese Agricultural Technology During This Period -- 1.2.2.3 Positive Impacts of the Industrial Revolution on Agriculture Still Highly Limited During This Period -- 1.2.3 Reasons for China's Economic Decline -- 1.2.3.1 Limitations on Division of Labor and Industries of Over-Small Scales of Operation -- 1.2.3.2 Limitations on Industry Upgrading of Expansion of Arable Land -- 1.2.3.3 Limitations of "Celestial Empire Thinking" on Changing the Status Quo -- 1.3 Agriculture in China for the 30 Years Prior to Reform and Opening -- 2 Agricultural Reforms -- 2.1 Reforms to Markets for Agricultural Products -- 2.1.1 Gradually Shrinking the Scope of the Agricultural State Monopoly -- 2.1.2 Gradually Reducing the Quantity of State Monopoly Purchases -- 2.1.3 Gradually Developing a Market for Agricultural Products -- 2.1.4 Expanding Channels for Circulation of Agricultural Products -- 2.2 Agricultural Factor Market Reforms -- 2.2.1 Reforms to Agricultural Input Markets -- 2.2.2 Reforms to Agricultural Labor Markets -- 2.2.2.1 Policies Restricting Rural Laborers to the Countryside

A commercial development model, based on Fujita's monopolistic competition model of spatial agglomeration, addresses firms' decisions to enter urban communities. The model focuses on commercial developers and large department stores, and identifies a potential holdup problem in the commercial development market arising because developers incur costs before negotiating with anchor tenants over profit sharing; the holdup problem is more likely to occur in low‐income communities where the profitability of commercial projects is small. The model predicts that direct incentives to developers are preferred to general tax incentives for addressing this market failure. (JEL R58, H50, H76)

This dissertation is composed of three self-contained chapters on international trade and economic development, with a special focus on the involvement of the government or public-funded sectors. The first chapter investigates international trade of higher education, specifically its impact on native students and native workers in the exporting country. Theoretically, I show that, in a general equilibrium model with non-profit publicly- subsidized higher education providers (HEPs) that care about both education quality and the enrollment of native students, serving foreign students may improve natives' access to higher education, which eventually benefits all native workers. Empirically, I find that, during the period 2001 to 2007, the enrollment of one more foreign student in an Australian university leads to the enrollment of around 0.75 more native students in this university. The impact is identified using an instrumental variable, generated from the interaction between demand for Australian higher education from different countries during the sample period and student networks these countries had in different Australian HEPs during 1989 to 1994. The second chapter studies commercial development in the presence of economic agglomeration of commercial goods and services, a result of consumers' love of varieties and transportation costs associated with commercial consumption. I show that a low-income community may be under-served with commercial goods and services because a developer cannot capture all the profits of a commercial project. A block grant to a developer can solve the market failure and generate a total profit bigger than the grant. Employment tax abatements alone are much less effective and much more costly. The third chapter examines the long- run impact of trade in higher education. In an overlapping generation (OG) model with a higher education sector composed of non-profit research institutions and for- profit teaching institutions, I show that importing teaching services benefits low-ability individuals by increased number of research workers in production, and that it may also benefit high-ability individuals by providing better training to skilled workers to complement research workers

This book systematically reviews the experiences and problems encountered in the development of China's rural areas over the past three decades since the start of the country's economic reform. As such, it addresses the most important aspects in terms of China's rural communities, farmers and agriculture from the perspective of development, such as the agricultural management system, rural land tenure system, rural fiscal and taxation system, financial system, science and technology system, rural governance structure, poverty alleviation, environmental protection, etc. The approach employed combines essential theories, laws, and policy strategies with rural development practice in order to analyze the success stories and lingering problems, to explore the causes of both, and to offer an outlook on the future of rural development.

AbstractInternational travel has been hypothesized to shape large cross‐country differences in productivity and income. However, evidence supporting this hypothesis, especially from developing countries, remains scarce. This paper fills this gap by studying a novel historical natural experiment—China's removal of travel restrictions on foreigners to designated Open‐to‐Foreigners‐Counties (OFCs). Utilizing the county‐by‐county rollout of the OFCs, we find that removing travel restrictions on foreigners led to a 7.4% increase in per capita industrial output for the OFCs in 1985–1991. The positive effects are larger in counties with more foreign equipment and greater industrial human capital. We highlight the role of person‐based international knowledge diffusion in the economic catch‐up of technology recipient countries.