@article{Cai:333894,
      recid = {333894},
      author = {Cai, Jinyang and Jia, Yao and Hu, Ruifa and Zhang, Chao},
      title = {Four decades of China’s agricultural extension reform and  its impact on agents’ time allocation},
      journal = {Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics},
      address = {2020-01-01},
      number = {428-2023-752},
      month = {Jan},
      year = {2020},
      abstract = {The Chinese Government has initiated a series of  agricultural reforms since the 1970s to encourage agents to  provide more services to farmers. In 2006, a new round of  agricultural reforms was extended nationwide; however, the  effectiveness of these reforms has not been examined. Based  on a comparison of survey data sets before and after the  reforms, we found that overall they significantly increased  the time agents spend on agricultural extension services,  although their effectiveness differs among three major  components of the reforms. While the financial assurance  reform had little impact on agents’ time allocation, the  administrative reform actually reduced the time allocation  to agricultural extension. However, we found strong  evidence that the ‘three rights’ management reform  (comprising the rights of personnel, financial and asset  management) successfully increased agents’ time allocation  to agricultural extension services. We also found that  institutional incentives and the Government’s investment  did not increase the time agents spent on agricultural  extension. The lack of incentives is a problem that needs  to be addressed in future reforms. We found that  professional agents spent more time providing extension  services than their non-professional counterparts. We  suggest that local Governments should avoid recruiting  nonprofessional agents into agricultural extension  stations.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/333894},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.333894},
}