Examining the determinants and efficiency of China's agricultural exports using a stochastic frontier gravity model

Nazir Muhammad Abdullahi; Qiangqiang Zhang; Saleh Shahriar; Muhammad Saqib Irshad; Abdullahi Bala Ado; Xuexi Huo

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0274187

Examining the determinants and efficiency of China's agricultural exports using a stochastic frontier gravity model

PLoS One. 2022 Sep 9;17(9):e0274187. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274187. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Nazir Muhammad Abdullahi^{1

2}, Qiangqiang Zhang¹, Saleh Shahriar³, Muhammad Saqib Irshad⁴, Abdullahi Bala Ado², Xuexi Huo¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F University, Shaanxi, China.
² School of Rural Technology and Entrepreneurship Development Rano, Kano State Polytechnic, Kano, Nigeria.
³ School of Humanities and Social Sciences, North South University, Bashundhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁴ Department of Economics, University of Jhnag, Jhang, Pakistan.

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the key determinants and efficiency of China's agricultural exports with its 114 importing countries by applying the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) on an augmented gravity model for the period of 2000-2019. The Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) and the fixed effect models were also estimated simultaneously to confirm the robustness of our findings. The results reveal that China's economic size (GDP) and its importing countries, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), common border, and the Chinese language positively determine China's agricultural export flows. The results, on the other hand, also reveal that China's agricultural export is adversely influenced by the income (per capita GDP) of China and its trade partners, currency depreciation, distance, and landlocked. On an average account, China has untapped the potential of 51% in its agriculture export with the countries used in this study. We provide policy suggestions as part of our study.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Agriculture*
China

Grants and funding

Xuexi Huo This work is Supported by the Earmarked Fund for China Agricultural Research System (Grant No. CARS-28). There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.