The Inverse Logics of Different Stages of Development under the Law of the Limit to Land Productivity (土地生产率极限法则下不同发展阶段的反向逻辑)

Abstract

To remind China’s policy makers that seemingly correct theories in the West can become harmful in China, this article builds a dynamic land-use model, where the limit to land productivity causes the physical, economic, and institutional systems of land use to change inversely in the stages before, in, and after the population trap. The article uses historical data to test the inverse changes, and finds that the English agricultural revolution was a result of a shift of land use first from intensive to extensive and then back to intensive cultivation. In the process of returning to intensive cultivation, the Norfolk rotation system combined planting with livestock husbandry and raised agricultural output and labor productivity by increasing the number of draft animals and the acreage devoted to forage crops. But the revolution was possible precisely because land productivity was much lower in England than in China.为提醒中国的政策制定者在西方似乎正确的理论在中国可能变得有害，本文建立了一个动态土地使用模型，在其中土地生产率极限使土地使用的物质、经济和制度系统在人口陷阱之前、之中和之后的三个不同发展阶段反向地变化。本文用历史数据检验了这些反向变化，发现英格兰的农业革命是土地使用从集约向粗放倒退然后再返回集约化的结果。在返回集约化的过程中，诺福克轮作制使种植业和畜牧业结合，通过大幅增加饲料作物和耕畜数量提高了农业总产值和劳动生产率。但这一革命能出现正是因为英格兰的土地生产率比中国低得多。 (This article is in English.)