This book deals with the off-farm labor supply of Chinese agricultural
households. The first objective explores the relationship between the
farm operators' off-farm labor supply and the household's farming
efficiency. The theoretical model predicts an inverse relationship
bet-ween farming efficiency and off-farm labor supply. However, the
empirical results show that the agricultural production technical
efficiency exhibits no significant effect on off-farm labor supply.
There appears to be a surplus of labor in the agrarian sector in China.
Restrictions on the movement of labor among regions and in the
reallocation of farmland serve to maintain this surplus and thus bring
about economic inefficiencies. The second objective investigates the
switching nature of the operator's off-farm labor supply depending on
the spouse's participation status in off-farm labor markets. The
off-farm labor supply behavior of operators with spouses working
off-farm exhibits some differences from that of the operators with
spouses' not working off-farm. The results support that the agricultural
household is a more relevant decision unit for resource allocation than
is its individual members.