On15 Mar.2019, we welcomed the speaker Dr.Wanglin Ma from Lincoln University, New Zealand.He works in the field of agricultural economics and development economics.In the seminar, Dr.Ma presented his last research “Agricultural Cooperativesand Technical Efficiency of Apple Farmers in China”, which examines the impact of agricultural cooperative membership on technical efficiency (TE) of apple farmers in China.
The empirical results show that TE for cooperative members ranges from 79 to 86 per cent and that for non-members ranges from 74 to 84 per cent, depending on how biases are controlled. In addition, the efficiency levels of both members and non-members of cooperatives appear to be underestimated if the selectivity bias is not appropriately addressed. Our findings conclude that the average TE is consistently higher for cooperative members relative to their counterparts, highlighting the positive role of contemporary agricultural cooperatives in promoting efficient usage of production inputs.
More than 20 teachers and students of the School of Economics and Management have participated in the seminar and discussed the study with Dr.Ma. We are looking forward to the Bi-Week Applied Economics Colloquium next week.
