Three Essays of Agriculture Production and Environmentin Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chen-Fu Lu, 呂振福
• Other Authors: 張宏浩
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47315761848588468349

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 農業經濟學研究所 === 103 === Considerable attention has been given to the impact of climate variability on farm production, and most of the researches have been provided by agronomists to identify the bio-physical relationship between climate factors and crop production. Relatively little attention has been given to this relationship from the standpoint of agricultural economists. This study aims to fill this void by assessing the potential cost of ignoring the impact of weather variability on the estimation of rice production function. Using nationwide representative farm-level data in Taiwan in 2008 and the Geographic Information System method, we merge the appropriate weather data with the existing farm data. Our results point to a biased estimation of the input elasticities if weather conditions are not considered. Moreover, the effects of temperature on rice production are more pronounced than the effects of rainfall. This study has used the panel data of Rice Production Cost Survey (RPCS) from Council of Agriculture (CoA) in Taiwan to assess the potential air pollution effects of the petrochemical industry on agricultural production in Yunlin Country. We have adopted the recently developed panel data approach of Hsiao et al. (2012) and synthetic control method of Abadie et al. (2010) for evaluation of treatment effect to construct the counterfactual paths of Yunlin’s rice production for the first and second period and further estimated what kind of pollutants would be account for the reduction of rice output. Our results have not only revealed the importance of ex post counterfactual analysis, but also provided empirical evidence that the possible adverse influence of petrochemical industry on agricultural production in Yunlin Country may be an increasing severe and crucial problem in the future. Based on these results, we have concluded that how to measure the production of crop would be in absence of pollution or even without the development of petrochemical industry is important for policy makers and the Government to assess the influence on environment and agricultural development.