¶ … Regional technical efficiency and technology gaps in rural China: evidence from CHIP surveys, by Wenjun Liu (2012)
The current review is based on the assessment of Wenjun Liu's article on the technological efficiency in China. It starts out by briefly summarizing the contents of the article, and then moves on to the presentation of more specific elements, such as the methodology employed by the author and the primary findings of the research conducted. Ultimately, the review culminates with the personal assessment of the reviewer, regarding the significance, usefulness, readability and overall quality of the article. The article acknowledges the people who helped him with the efforts to gather information, and assumes the responsibility of any errors for himself.
Wenjun Liu (2012) seeks to analyze the usage of technology within the rural areas of China, and also to assess the gaps which exist in technology usage across various rural regions of the country. The primary finding of this effort is that the usage of technology has increased significantly throughout the past recent years in the rural areas of China, and the increase has been a rather stable one across the regions; this virtually means that the gaps still exist.
In order to assess the topic set out, Liu employed the stochastic metafrontier methodology, which is a quantitative research method based on the gathering of information and...
The usage of this quantitative method of analysis ensures the objectivity of the results and the ability to extrapolate the findings in order to explain the phenomenon at a larger scale, outside the restricted sample which was initially selected (Vogt, 2007).
The data employed in the statistical analysis included the levels of technologic efficiency, the technologic gap and their determinants in rural China and were collected with the aid of the CHIP, or the Chinese Household Income Project. Some examples of data used include the number of households in the selected rural regions, income rations within the selected households, the level of economic development within the selected rural regions and so on.
Based on the analysis conducted, Liu retrieved three important findings, as revealed below:
First of all, Liu identified a negative relationship between the technology gap and regional technical efficiency for all assessed regions, except for the northwest. This virtually means that there does not exist a positive and direct relationship between technologic efficiency and technologic advancement.
Secondly, the findings indicate that the more technologically challenged regions (with higher gaps), need to focus more on the reduction of the technology gap from one household to the other. This would virtually be attained through the diffusion of…
