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Abstract From the background of small peasant management and information asymmetry, this paper introduced the middle profit sharing model and discussed influence factors and ownership of pricing power of agricultural products. It obtained following results: (i) the transaction scale has positive effect on farmer's pricing power of agricultural products, while the competitor's transaction scale has negative effect on it, so does the cost for information search ; (ii) under the condition of small peasant management system, farmer is in a relatively weak position in the distribution of pricing power of agricultural products, due to factors such as small transaction scale, information asymmetry and farmer's weak negotiation ability; (iii) through cooperative game, farmer and buyers can share cooperative surplus at the agreed ratio; (iv) the introduction of self-organizing specialized farmers cooperatives is favorable for solving the problem of pricing power of agricultural products, and possible problems, such as "collective action dilemma" and "fake cooperatives" in the cooperative development process can be solved by internal and external division of labor and specialization of cooperatives.
Key words Small peasant management, Information asymmetry, Pricing power, Middle profit, Transaction cost
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1 Introduction
Income of fanners is the core of three rural issues. Slow growth in farmers' income from household business is the major reason for slow growth of total income[1]. The Household Contract Responsibility System implemented more than 30 years ago has brought great leap in agricultural productivity, but it also poses problems such as decentralization of land ownership, fragmentation of farmland, and small scale[2]. In such institutional arrangement, small peasants have to face the market independently. When participating in transaction of agricultural products, they lack sufficient information and knowledge, and also lack right of speech and negotiation ability. Besides, government and enterprises often use nonmarket forces to expel small peasants from circulation system of agricultural products, so small peasants always remain the deprived situation and fail to share benefits of socialized labor diviston[3].
From pricing of agricultural products completely by government in the period of planned economy to gradual opening of price of agricultural products in the price reform of 1985, China's agricultural products have completed the transformation from planned pricing to market pricing[4]. Besides, as producers and suppliers of agricultural products,...