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The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiplier effects of the grain subsidy program in China, which is a large food self-sufficiency project that is implemented as a cash transfer program. Income multiplier effects have not been empirically examined in the evaluation of the grain subsidy program although increasing the income of farmers is the original goal of this project.

A large number of household-level observations are employed to measure the program’s income multiplier. An unrestricted model was first employed to measure the multipliers in a period of two years, and the difference was evaluated. Then, the income promotion effects of grain subsidy on various income sources for each specific subset of the population, such as liquidity conditions and household characteristics, were estimated.

The results show that the grain subsidy program has a high income multiplier, and the income promotion effect of the transferred subsidies is from agricultural production derived by intensifying input for each unit of land. The multiplier effect of the grain subsidy program as a cash transfer program can be interpreted as the shadow value of relaxing liquidity constraints and could be particularly utilized by households with more farming land and farmers in less developed regions in China. Hence, to maximize the income multiplier effect, the grain subsidy distribution method should consider these criteria instead of retaining the prevalent standard that is based on contracted land areas.

This study addresses the gap that the effect of China’s grain subsidy program on income increment has not been empirically examined in nation wide.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the grain production implications of alternative designs for China’s grain subsidy policy. In particular, the authors examine three subsidy designs including area-based subsidy, quantity-based subsidy and production-cost-based subsidy.

To carry out the analysis, the authors develop a Chinese agricultural sector model (CASM) and an econometric, policy action–farmer response summary model. The CASM is used under a wide variety of subsidy level and basis experiments to generate pseudo data on farmer reactions to subsidies. Then a summary function model was estimated over those pseudo data that quantitatively summarized modeled farmer responses to different grain subsidy schemes. In turn, the summary functions were used to optimize the subsidy level such that it maximized grain production both within and across the area-based, quantity-based and cost-based subsidies. Regional implications were also developed.

The authors found that the production-quantity-based subsidy is the most cost-effective in stimulating grain production among the subsidy schemes. The authors also argue that scheme complies with WTO regulations regarding product-specific support. The authors found that the areas where grain production was most affected were the traditional grain-producing regions.

To the authors’ knowledge the authors have not seen a study of the Chinese grain subsidy program context that examined the effects of alternative subsidy schemes, nor one that developed estimates of the optimal subsidy level. In addition, the methodology is unique employing bottom-up, regionally disaggregated, sector modeling coupled with an aggregate pseudo data based summary function approach providing a new, original approach for analyzing agricultural policy design.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the costs of price and income subsidies when the food security policy targets the urban poor. The result may help policymakers choose a desired subsidy scheme to ensure food security for the urban poor facing food price surge.

The analysis consists of three parts: constructing an empirical model on provincial panel data in 1993‐2009 estimating the impact of grain price on food security among urban residents by different income level; evaluating the potential costs of shifting to income subsidy aiming to maintain the real income levels of the low income, lowest income or the poor residents if grain price increases by 20 percent; and comparing with the cost of price subsidy to achieve the same policy goal.

The paper finds that, food price surge will hurt the urban poor much more seriously than the high income population; the rich residents may receive more benefit from price subsidy; and income subsidy has obviously a cost advantage while the targeted people benefit more.

The obvious value of the paper is to show that income subsidy is much more desired than price subsidy, if the policy goal is to help the poor during food price surge.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the implications of China's recently adopted agricultural policies on domestic and international commodity markets.

A systematic, quantitative analysis is applied to address whether China's recent trade and production policies distort China's domestic and international commodity markets. The paper provides a clear picture of how trade‐restricting policies affect markets using a 42‐country partial equilibrium global dynamic agricultural simulation model.

The paper shows that recent agricultural policy reforms increase China's production slightly, causing imports to decrease while exports decline because of input subsidies, export taxes and the reduction of export value added tax rebates. Domestic prices to consumers decrease in real terms. The effects on world markets are small as the set of policies adopted partially offset each other in the international arena.

The paper indicates that the adoption of the policy reforms lower price levels domestically and benefit lower income urban and rural households, whose diets are largely based on rice and wheat as staple foods. Future model enhancements should include measures of producer and consumer welfare in order to capture the total impacts of policies and policy changes in China.

The paper quantifies the potential implications of the recent agricultural policy reforms in China. This contributes to the investigation of the effects of these policies implemented by the Chinese Government to achieve the country's policy objectives. Owing to the dynamics of China's policy implementation an in‐depth analysis sheds light and contributes to capturing the impacts of policy reforms on the domestic and international markets.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model to analyze economy‐wide impacts of different types of public spending in China. A particular focus is placed on their impacts on food economy.

In this paper, DCGE model is developed to analyze economy‐wide impacts of different types of public spending in China. The effects of increased agricultural subsidies, agricultural R&D, and irrigation are simulated by using China DCGE model.

The results show that public spending has significant impact on food production, price, and trade. The increased public spending on agricultural R&D, irrigation, and agricultural subsidy also has modest impacts on other sectors such as industry, service, and GDP growth.

The paper constructs the China dynamic CGE model and analyzes economy‐wide impacts of different types of public spending in China, especially for the food economy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical pattern of environmental cost due to grain production in China and to provide further implications of technologies and policies for the transformation of China’s agricultural development toward sustainable intensification.

The data sets about grain production, arable land and chemical fertilizer use in China were collected from FAO, NBSC, and IFA. Greenhouse gas emissions were estimated using life cycle assessments. The policies concerning grain production and the environment were collected from the Ministry of Agriculture, and the State Council of China.

China has produced enough food to feed its growing population, but has neglected the resource-environmental costs of grain production since 1978. Consequently, China’s grain production is always accompanied with a high cost of resource and environment sustainability. However, from 2006 to 2015, the growth rate of grain production has surpassed that of chemical fertilizer consumption, resulting in improvement in nutrient use efficiency and decreasing trends of environmental cost for grain production. This could be partially attributed to technology innovations, such as Soil-Testing and Fertilizer-Recommendations (STFR), soil quality and crop management improvement, and so on, and policy supports (policies of STFR, soil quality improvement, and high-yield construction). This indicated that China’s grain production is starting to transform from high-input and high-output model to “less for more.”

This study is the first to determine the detailed, historical role of technological innovation and agri-environmental policy on the sustainability of grain production in China. The findings should have significant implications for technology and policy for the transformation of China’s agriculture development to sustainable intensification.

China has shifted its agricultural policy from tax agriculture to support it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the agricultural policy changes of China in recent years, focussing on the support policy. China supports its agriculture sector through tax elimination, area payment and input subsidy. In this paper, the author intends to evaluate China’s agricultural support policy effect with a modified policy evaluation model (PEM).

The author modifies PEM used by OECD to estimate the effects of these support policies on production and farmer’s income.

The main findings are input subsidy policy has more effect than area payment policy in general; input subsidy policy has more effects on production while area payment has more effects on farmer’s income; and the sensitivity analysis further indicates that input subsidy policy has more influence than area payment as regarding production impact ratio, while area payment has more influence on income impact ratios.

Based on these findings, when it comes to the support policy in terms of area payment and input subsidies only, the author puts forward the following policy implications: to increase input subsidy in budgets and expand the covering scope, and to continue implementing area payment policy with more budgets. However, support policies playing an important role in improving production efficiency and marketing support should be given priority.

The main contributions of this paper are modifying the OECD PEM to China’s conditions; and quantifying China’s agricultural policy effects.

Since the start of the twenty‐first century China has stepped into a new stage of harmonious urban‐rural development. Based on the brief review of policy changes since the new century, the purpose of this paper is to figure out the comprehensive policy framework, and analyze its background and reasons.

First, this paper offers a brief review of China's rural reform with focus on the policy framework and changes since the reform of rural tax and fee system in 2000. Next, the paper focuses on food security to discuss grain price increase and China's grain imports, then the current problems facing China's agricultural and rural development are discussed and countermeasures provided.

The paper finds that several policies have been implemented toward the coordination between urban and rural areas and toward the integration of urban and rural development. However, China's grain production is still facing big challenges, both from the increasing demand and the resource constraint. Therefore, food security should be given priority in future. China's current rural reform and development is also facing the problems such as slow growth of farmer's income, the impacts of migrant rural labourer on economy and society and the outflow of rural resources.

This paper reviews systematically major policies of China's agriculture and rural development, and analyzes the characteristics of and reasons for China's grain price increase. Meanwhile, the constraint of resources, especially land and water, is also studied in detail. The paper's analysis can provide important advice for future policy making.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a modelling approach that enables the analysis of long-term food security policies. Specifically, the authors explore the effect of China’s agricultural domestic support on its agricultural and food market by also considering the impact of incomplete price transmission.

The authors extend the standard Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) modelling framework. First, the authors incorporate incomplete price transmission into the GTAP model by generating tariff-equivalent price transmission elasticities. Second, the authors improve the current representation of China’s agricultural domestic support in the GTAP model and the underlying database by considering the production requirements and the trade-distorting effect of different policy instruments. Running a set of simulations, the authors examine first how the incorporation of incomplete price transmission affects the model’s results and second how increased agricultural domestic support affects China’s agricultural and food market accounting for incomplete price transmission.

Considering incomplete price transmission mitigates the domestic price increases as responses to high international agricultural prices, which also lead to an increase in China’s trade deficit and prohibits net food sellers from receiving high prices. In the long term, an increase in China’s agricultural domestic support to its World Trade Organisation de minimis commitment level would increase domestic agricultural production and reduce its demand pressure on the international market.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of increased agricultural domestic support on the domestic market while innovatively accounting for incomplete food price transmission. The authors combine econometric estimated price transmission elasticities and an extended GTAP framework to underscore the importance of enhancing the model’s ability in accounting for incomplete price transmission when analysing the impact of agricultural policies.

This paper aims to examine whether China's grain price support policy has distorted the grain market price.

The time-varying differences-in-differences (DID) model is used to study the impact of support policies on grain prices, and it is combined with the event study method to explore the dynamic effects of price support policy. Panel data model is used to study the effect of the price support policy on price formation for national grain market prices. In addition, we apply the smooth transformation (STR) model to verify whether there is a distortion in the transmission of grain prices among different markets in China and from the international market to China’s market.

China’s grain price support policy plays a significant role in rising grain market prices, weakens the decisive role of the market mechanism in the formation of grain prices, hinders the spatial transmission of market price signals and decreases the effect of price transmission from the world market to China’s market.

In order to ensure both the stability of grain production as well as the market stability, and also to ensure that intervention policies do not distort the food market, the minimum purchase price of grain and market regulation policies should be adjusted as follows: (1) price support policy should be shifted to an income support policy and (2) reasonably determine the scale of reserves and implement a grain minimum purchase price policy in limited areas.

Our findings are relevant for understanding the effect of China's grain price support policies on the implementation regions and the price transmission effect, which provide reference experience for developing countries to implement food price policies.