Zhuang Zhang

Inefficiencies in farmland rental markets remain an important constraint to agricultural modernization and efficient land allocation in developing economies, where participation in land rental transactions remains limited despite ongoing institutional reforms. Although existing studies have emphasized tangible economic factors such as land rents, credit access, and agricultural subsidies, considerably less attention has been given to whether intangible assets, such as geographical indication‐based branding, influence farmland rental market participation. This study examines the relationship between Specialized Agricultural Geographical Indication (SAGI) certification and farmers' decisions to rent farmland in or out in rural China. Using data from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey and an Endogenous Switching Probit model to account for nonrandom selection into SAGI areas, the study estimates the treatment effects of SAGI certification on farmland rental participation. The results show that SAGI certification increases the estimated probability of renting farmland in by 4.36% and renting farmland out by 9.18% among treated households. The larger effect on farmland rental out suggests heterogeneous responses to SAGI certification, with resource‐constrained smallholders more likely to lease out farmland while better‐endowed producers are better positioned to expand their operations. Mechanism analysis indicates that these effects are associated with both economic and political channels, including higher farmland‐related revenues and production costs, improved information provision, and greater access to agricultural subsidies. The effects also vary according to contracted landholding, credit access, e‐commerce training, market distance, and village governance conditions. Overall, the findings suggest that geographical indication policies may contribute not only to agricultural product branding but also to farmland reallocation and changes in rural production structures.

Using data from global low and high-income countries over 35 years (from 1980 to 2014), we tried to find the correlations between electricity consumption, economic development, and CO2 emissions by employing the PVAR (Panel Vector Auto Regressive) model, impulse response function, and variance decomposition method. It demonstrates that electricity consumption and CO2 are Granger reasons for economic growth in the two group countries, but GDP and CO2 emissions can only guide the exploration of electricity energy in high-income countries. Technological differences between the two groups of countries lead to different costs in energy usage; low-income countries are unable to carry out electric energy innovation and revolution while high-income countries can. For sustainable development, lowincome countries should pay attention to the development and application of energy technologies, but not only GDP.

Purpose: Numerical literature shows that agricultural insurance can affect pesticide investments, but few of them are devoted to explain how agricultural insurance affects farmers’ selection on green or traditional pesticides. This paper aims to develop a theoretical model about how agricultural insurance influences on green pesticides selections and tests our conclusions by using the data from China land economic survey (CLES) from 2020 to 2021.Design/methodology/approach: We employ probit model to capture the effects of agricultural insurance on green pesticides adoption.Findings: We indicate that green pesticides have a stronger effect on stabilizing yield and increasing income than traditional pesticides, but there are still risks disturbing farmers’ decisions on green pesticides usage. By providing premium subsidies after the farmers are affected by natural risk, agricultural insurance improves the farmers’ expected income and encourages farmers to use green pesticides. Further, we further confirm these conclusions by considering different scenarios such as climate risks, farmers’ entrepreneurship and credit constraints. We find that the effects are more salient if croplands are under higher natural risks and, farmers are equipped with entrepreneurship and formal credit. This paper implies that the agricultural insurance decoupled with green technologies also have salient positive effects on agricultural pollution control.Originality/value: The potential contributions of this paper can be outlined in three aspects in detail. Firstly, this paper aims to revel the effects of agricultural insurance on pesticide selection by structuring a general theoretical model. By using the CLES data from 2020 to 2021, we confirm that agricultural insurance increases the probability for adopting green pesticides. Secondly, this paper discusses the effects of farmers’ characteristics on the results and finds that if farmers have entrepreneurship, the effects of agricultural insurance on green pesticide usage will be more salient. Thirdly, it uncovers some practices in China, which will supply experiences for other developing countries. For example, this paper further demonstrates that “insurance + credit” plan the present Chinese government carried out will be an important measure for strengthening effects of agricultural insurance on green pesticides usage. Moreover, it shows that decouple agricultural policies will also guide farmers to use green technologies eventually if the technologies are reliable and farmers can afford.

The quantity and quality of edible agricultural products are critical for food security (quantity) and safety (quality). Supplying consumers with enough safe food is the key responsibility of food production firms. Still, this aim is not always guaranteed because of input capacity constraints and other limitations in the agricultural sector. A hybrid subsidy, a mix of quantity and quality subsidy, could help achieve food security and safety in a country its flexibility. However, the advantages of the hybrid have not been fully investigated. Thus, this paper designs a hybrid subsidy for edible agricultural products by considering cost uncertainties and input resource constraints. All conclusions are obtained by theoretical mathematical analysis. (1) equilibrium solutions under different conditions—cost uncertainties and input constraints—are obtained, and comparative analyses is offered. (2) the results show that the hybrid subsidy is convenient in the trade-off between food quantity and quality, which means a hybrid subsidy policy design is flexible and efficient for food security and safety. (3) cost uncertainties and input resource constraints have significant impacts on the efficiency of the hybrid subsidy. Findings show that the hybrid subsidy is ideal for supporting edible agricultural products. Additionally, we argue that cost uncertainties and input constraints should be considered when making policy efficiency evaluations. This study has a novel contribution to agricultural support policy design.

Few studies provide direct evidences that agricultural fiscal affects agricultural carbon intensity. This study tries to fill this gap. Using panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019, we conclude that agricultural fiscal expenditures significantly reduce agricultural carbon intensity. The result is still robust after employing the provincial agricultural leaders’ birthplace information as an instrumental variable. Further study shows that the negative effect of agricultural fiscal expenditures on agricultural carbon intensity is more pronounced in regions with less corruption and is also more visible in central, western, and inland regions than other areas. For this effect, agricultural technological improvement and structure optimization are possible channels, but not operation scale expansion. Interestingly, although agricultural fiscal expenditures reduce the local agricultural carbon intensity, neighbor regions’ carbon intensities are increased due to fiscal rivalry.

Few studies provide direct evidence that agricultural fiscal affects agricultural carbon intensity, we try to fill this gap. Using panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019, we conclude that agricultural fiscal expenditures significantly reduce agricultural carbon intensity. The result is still robust after employing the provincial agricultural leaders’ birthplace information as an instrumental variable. Further study shows that the negative effect of agricultural fiscal expenditures on agricultural carbon intensity is more pronounced in regions with less corruption, and is also more visible in central, western and inland regions than other areas. For this effect, agricultural technological improvement and structure optimization are possible channels, but not operation scale expansion. Interestingly, although agricultural fiscal expenditures reduce the local agricultural carbon intensity, other regions' carbon intensity is increased due to fiscal rivalry.