ABSTRACT
The data employed in the estimation of production functions in this chapter was derived from that published in the Statistical Volume of John L. Buck’s Land Utilization in China, representing the results of a survey conducted between 1929 and 1933 of a cross-sectional sample of about 16,000 farms. The physical quantity of land cultivated is a very poor proxy for the input “land” because of the qualitative heterogeneity of this variable. More frequently in production function analysis the value of land is employed on the presumption that variations in quality will be reflected in land price. Intertemporal variation within the sample was accounted for by the inclusion of dummy variables representing the years between 1929 and 1933 in which the observations were taken for a given locality. The intent was to account primarily for weather conditions which were common to a region for a particular crop season, thereby reducing the unexplained residuals.
