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The impacts of economic reform on the efficiency of silviculture: a non-parametric approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2002

Yaoqi Zhang
Yaoqi Zhang
Affiliation:
Dept. of Rural Economy, University of Alberta, 563 General Services Building, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada. Tel: (780) 4921518. Fax: (780) 4920268. Email: YaoqiZhang@yahoo.com
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Abstract

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Institutions and organizations are regarded as being important in determining the efficiency of economic agents and public units. This study first reviews the economic reforms in silvicultural activities in China's state-owned forestry bureaux, then empirically examines the impact of economic reforms. Panel data from 40 forestry bureaux in Heilongjiang Province, and two different economic regimes: from the pre-reform and economic transition periods, are analyzed by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The technical efficiency has been decomposed into pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency and then examined. Our results show that the economic reforms have increased efficiency on average by about 25 per cent. Moreover, the study qualitatively analyses the sources of improvement and argues that the efficiency gain is a result of reductions in labour shirking and administration costs.

Keywords

DEAeconomic reformssilvicultureefficiencyforestryChina
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 2002 , pp. 107 - 122
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

Footnotes

Mr Ren Qingshan of the Northeast Forestry University (China) and Mrs. Chao Renjie of the General Forest Resources Bureau of Heilongjiang (China) provided assistance in data collection. I am also grateful to Douglas Allen, Jari Kuuluvainen, Jussi Uusivuori, Esa-Jussi Viitala and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The data collection was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre's (IDRC) Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA).