Of maize and men: the effect of a New World crop on population and economic growth in China
Of maize and men: the effect of a New World crop on population and economic growth in China
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DOI：
10.1007/s10887-016-9125-8
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发表时间：
2013-11
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Shuo Chen;J. Kung
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Shuo Chen;J. Kung
我们研究了中国是否在马尔萨斯制度下陷入困境的问题，而当时西欧几乎已经摆脱了马尔萨斯制度。通过对1600年至1910年中国玉米的采用进行差异中的差异分析，我们发现，种植这种新世界作物未能提高人均收入。虽然玉米在1776-1910年期间占中国人口增长的近19%，但它对城市化和真实的工资的影响并不明显。我们的研究结果是强大的不同的样本选择程序，控制有关马尔萨斯的“积极检查”的变量，不同的经济增长措施和数据修改。因此，我们的研究提供了丰富的经验支持，在18世纪和19世纪的中国条件下，新的农业技术导致了马尔萨斯人口增长的结果，而没有工资增长和城市化。
We examine the question of whether China was trapped within a Malthusian regime at a time when Western Europe had all but emerged from it. By applying a difference-in-differences analysis to maize adoption in China from 1600 to 1910, we find that cultivation of this New World crop failed to raise per capita income. While maize accounted for a nearly 19 % increase in the Chinese population during 1776–1910, its effect on urbanization and real wages was not pronounced. Our results are robust to different sample selection procedures, to the control of variables pertinent to Malthusian “positive checks”, to different measures of economic growth and to data modifications. Our study thus provides rich empirical support to the claim that under the conditions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China, new agricultural technologies led to the Malthusian outcome of population growth without wage increases and urbanization.