Guest Lecturers Professor Mark R.Rosenzweig from Yale University and Professor Zhang Junsen from Chinese University of Hong Kong Delivered Academic Lectures at Lingnan College.

On the afternoon of December 15, Mark R. Rosenzweig, Yale University professor and fellow of the Institute of Labor Economics and Econometrics, and Zhang Junsen, academician of the Econometrics Society of China and Chinese University of Hong Kong professor, delivered two academic presentations at Lingnan.
 

The title of Professor Rosenzweig's report is Are There Too Many Farms in the World? Labor-Market Transaction Costs, Machine Capacities and Optimal Farm Size. The article attempts to explain two phenomena. The first is the difference in the efficiency of agricultural production between low-income countries and high-income countries. This difference in efficiency indicates that the size of farms is often small in low-income countries while it is the opposite in high-income countries. The second is a U-shaped correlation between farm size and farm productivity, which means that as farm size gradually increases, farm productivity will gradually decline. However, as the size continues to increase beyond a certain threshold, farm productivity will increase when the farm size continues increasing. Rosenzweig’s article explains these phenomena by introducing the labor market transaction costs. At the same time, the article also points out that high-income countries use economies of scale to reduce production costs by completing a wide range of production operations through mechanizing the production process. This explains why there is a salient positive correlation between farm size and farm productivity at the end of the productivity distribution. The author confirms these assumptions through ICRISAT VLS panel survey data from India. After the academic presentation, Professor Rosenzweig answered questions from students and gave his own opinions on the state of agricultural in China, France, and India.

Professor Mark R. Rosenzweig

The title of Professor Zhang Junsen's speech is Hard to Get: The Scarcity of Women and the Competition for High-income Men in Urban China. Junsen explains why it is more difficult for elite women to find the right spouse in China when the population of women in China is relatively small. Junsen demonstrates that when the income of Chinese women increases, they often tend to look for men whose income is higher, which then limits their choices for a potential spouse. Although the number of high-income men also increases, the opportunities for high-income women to find spouses might not rise but rather decline because they must also compete with low-income women who are also looking for high-income spouses. The article explains this phenomenon by introducing the "reference-dependent preference", as well as three aspects of data: experiment design, CPFS, and census. With this data, Junsen solidifies theory with evidence. 

Professor Zhang Junsen'