报告题目：Irrigation Investments and Agricultural Productivity in Northern China
报告人：黄开兴
时间：2026年4月29日10:00-12:00
地点：西安交通大学创新港涵英楼8121会议室
报告人简介：
黄开兴，经济学博士，北京大学中国农业政策研究中心研究员，博士生导师，澳大利亚阿德莱德大学经济学博士。主要从事发展经济学、农业经济学和经济增长等领域的研究，重点关注气候变化、农业政策、农村经济转型及人口与经济增长等议题。研究成果发表在Journal of Development Economics、American Journal of Agricultural Economics、Journal of Agricultural Economics、Journal of Environmental Economics and Management、Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics、European Economic Review、Journal of Population Economics、《经济学季刊》等期刊。
摘要：
Irrigation is widely recognized as a key driver of agricultural productivity and rural economic development, yet credible evidence on its impacts, mechanisms, and long-term economic returns remains limited due to endogenous irrigation investments. Leveraging the timing of government irrigation investments and longitudinal household survey data spanning 15 years, we investigate how irrigation affects agricultural productivity. We find that irrigation investment increased the share of irrigated farmland by 11.0 percentage points, which in turn raised per-area output by 14.9 percent, net agricultural income by 15.6 percent, agricultural TFP by 13.7 percent, and per-labor output by 36.2 percent. These effects are driven by four key mechanisms: increased use of high-productivity inputs, expanded cultivation area, labor reallocation from farm work to off-farm work, and mitigation of drought damage. The induced land expansion and labor reallocation explain the substantially larger increase in per-labor output. A cost-effectiveness analysis suggests a high return to irrigation investment, with approximately half of the return stemming from labor reallocation that increased off-farm income.
