@article{Zhu:277219,
      recid = {277219},
      author = {Zhu, J.},
      title = {The agricultural root of innovation in China},
      address = {2018-07},
      year = {2018},
      abstract = {This paper presents evidence in favor of the hypothesis  that agricultural legacy matters for shaping the  equilibrium level of current innovations. The rice theory  (Talhelm et al., 2014) provided a micro foundation for the  proposition that people in rice cultivating areas are more  inclined toward holistic thinking while wheat cultivating  biases one toward analytical thinking. By taking advantages  of homogeneity among Han Chinese, this paper proposes and  tests the hypothesis that regions that grow rice (the  suitability of land for rice production is used as a proxy)  tend to inculcate values which promote weak innovations.  Using multilevel (province, prefecture, county, and  individual level) data within China, the results lend  strong support to the proposed idea. Our findings are  robust with alternative measures of rice cultivation, with  alternative estimation strategies, and with the inclusion  of various geographical, socioeconomic, and potentially  confounding correlates. 

Acknowledgement :  The authors  thank Tang Zhong, Thomas Talhelm, and Ng Yew-Kwang for  helpful discussions and comments, and Liu Meng and Aatishya  Mohanty for providing competent research assistance. The  usual disclaimers apply.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/277219},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.277219},
}