Study on the Cooperative Movement and the Agricultural Productivity in New China

The impact of socialist transformation of agriculture in new China is still controversial. Theoretically, cooperative brings both scale effect and supervision cost, while the right of free exit can reduce supervision cost and raise net revenue. Using the provincial data from 1950 to 1956, we find that the efficacy is indifferent between household farming and mutual-aid team, but the productivity of primary and advanced cooperative is lower than household farming. The efficiency of cooperative shows an inverse U shape relationship with its scale. The new liberated regions or the regions where more kulak and middle peasants transform into cooperative member see lower productivity than their counterparts for the policy radicalism.