Great western development is a regional and preferential reform which began in the mid-1990s, and which intends to promote China's western economy. In this study, I statistically measure the effects of agricultural input growth, technological improvements and most importantly the improvement in institutional efficiency, which is attributed to great western development. This measurement is pursued by first discussing general aspects of Chinese agriculture, including a brief history of China's agricultural economy and politics as well as agricultural policy changes after the reforms. In order to estimate the effects of great western development on the Chinese agricultural production, I use the stochastic frontier production function. This approach is used widely in the field of economics in areas of measuring technical efficiency and policy effects in an industry with random shocks. I accompany this approach with several economic theories such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), measurement of technical inefficiency and estimation of technical change in the production function. An important contribution of this thesis is empirical estimation of stochastic frontier production function for great western development and a hypothesis test using the Monte-Carlo method. By maximum likelihood estimation with respect to the stochastic frontier production function, the measurement of the efficiency improvement is produced for the west and the east of China before and after great western development, respectively. A conclusion, made after the empirical analysis, is that great western development has positive effects on agricultural production and productivity in the western China.

Great western development is a regional and preferential reform which began in the mid-1990s, and which intends to promote China's western economy. In this study, I statistically measure the effects of agricultural input growth, technological improvements and most importantly the improvement in institutional efficiency, which is attributed to great western development. This measurement is pursued by first discussing general aspects of Chinese agriculture, including a brief history of China's agricultural economy and politics as well as agricultural policy changes after the reforms. In order to estimate the effects of great western development on the Chinese agricultural production, I use the stochastic frontier production function. This approach is used widely in the field of economics in areas of measuring technical efficiency and policy effects in an industry with random shocks. I accompany this approach with several economic theories such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), measurement of technical inefficiency and estimation of technical change in the production function. An important contribution of this thesis is empirical estimation of stochastic frontier production function for great western development and a hypothesis test using the Monte-Carlo method. By maximum likelihood estimation with respect to the stochastic frontier production function, the measurement of the efficiency improvement is produced for the west and the east of China before and after great western development, respectively. A conclusion, made after the empirical analysis, is that great western development has positive effects on agricultural production and productivity in the western China.

Great western development is a regional and preferential reform which began in the mid-1990s, and which intends to promote China's western economy. In this study, I statistically measure the effects of agricultural input growth, technological improvements and most importantly the improvement in institutional efficiency, which is attributed to great western development. This measurement is pursued by first discussing general aspects of Chinese agriculture, including a brief history of China's agricultural economy and politics as well as agricultural policy changes after the reforms. In order to estimate the effects of great western development on the Chinese agricultural production, I use the stochastic frontier production function. This approach is used widely in the field of economics in areas of measuring technical efficiency and policy effects in an industry with random shocks. I accompany this approach with several economic theories such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), measurement of technical inefficiency and estimation of technical change in the production function. An important contribution of this thesis is empirical estimation of stochastic frontier production function for great western development and a hypothesis test using the Monte-Carlo method. By maximum likelihood estimation with respect to the stochastic frontier production function, the measurement of the efficiency improvement is produced for the west and the east of China before and after great western development, respectively. A conclusion, made after the empirical analysis, is that great western development has positive effects on agricultural production and productivity in the western China. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

Mainland China since its economic reform has become one of the countries that attract most foreign investment, which brought significant influence on China¡¦s economic development. However, the foreign investment has a highly unbalanced distribution within China, with the coastal area absorbing more than eighty per cent of the total amount. The uneven distribution exacerbated the development disparity among different regions. In an effort to address the regional development gap and ameliorate inland economic development, central government in China put forward the Western Development Program in 2000. This paper seeks to analyze the impacts foreign investment brought to west China, by examining China¡¦s foreign investment policy since its economic reform, and its Western Development Program since 2000, respectively. The research concludes that as economic reform began in China¡¦s eastern area, the region benefited from government¡¦s favorable foreign investment policy and advanced its economic development. Western area, on the contrary, demonstrates otherwise. The Western¡¦s Development Program failed to attract substantial foreign investment into inland China, and the preferential policies for foreign investment had only very limited success. This is due to a range of factors taken into consideration by foreign investors when contemplating operating in the western area, including the infrastructure and the investment environment in west China. As such, government¡¦s preferential policies remain ineffective and the distribution of foreign investment continues to be highly asymmetrical.

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Special economic zones are one of the tools utilized by Chinese government to stimulate the growth of local economy, especially through foreign investment. This thesis is focused on special economic zone in Shenzhen and on use of special economic zones for development of inland provinces of China in recent years, which are lagging in economic development in comparison with the developed provinces on the eastern coast. Western development plan is demonstrated on the example of the province of Xinjiang. The thesis further sumarizes bow is the approach to establishment of special economic zones changing in recent years, compared to the period of early 1980s.

中國大陸在近幾十年來的經濟成長舉世矚目，卻也造成了中國大陸東西部發展不平均的隱憂。有鑑於此，江澤民在1999 年的「中央扶貧開發會議」上首次提出了「西部大開發」戰略概念，期能縮小區域發展不均衡的差距。西部大開發預計進行50 年分三個階段進行，截至2010 年已經完成了第一階段。在這十年間，整個西部地區有著巨大的改變。 　　因此，本文的研究目的在於，利用大陸西部12 個省、市、地區自2000 至2010年的追蹤資料，再運用Tobit實証模型進行實證分析。其實證結果顯示，財政地方分權程度、人口密度、地區生產總值、地方政府規模以及地區開放程度等因素，對地方政府效率值之影響為正向；而財政地方分權程度之平方項與地方政府規模之平方項，則對地方政府效率具有負向影響，即財政地方分權與地方政府規模對於地方政府效率之影響可能呈現非單調性。 / The economic growth of China has increased rapidly in recent several decades, but thisgrowth has resulted in the imbalance between the eastern and western region. According tothis situation, Zemin Jiang first proposed the “Grand Western Development Program” in the“central poverty alleviation and development conference” in 1999, hoping to reduce the imbalance in the regional development gap. After carrying out the Grand Western Development Program, the growth ranges of GDP per capita in some of regions have risen quickly. Therefore, the research purpose of this literature is to analyze the empirical estimation of the Tobit model with the panel data which include 12 provinces, cities, and regions in China western area from 2000 to 2010. The empirical results show that the degree of fiscal decentralization, the density of population, gross regional product, the scale of local government, and the degree of openness all have positive influences on the efficiency of local governments. However, the quadratic terms of the degree of fiscal decentralization and the scale of local government have negative influences on the efficiency of local governments. That is to say, the degree of fiscal decentralization and the scale of local government probably have non-monotonic effects on the efficiency of local governments.