THESIS
2008
Abstract
This study, using a unique village survey of Manchuria in the 1930s, tries to test the relationship between the commercialization of soybeans and the economic status of Manchurian villagers in the 1930s. Through constructing a difference-in-difference model with two crucial types of variations in the process of commercialization in the 1930s, namely, variations in the effects of commercialization across cohorts and regions, the dynamic effect of commercialization on the economic status of the villagers is revealed. This paper finds that commercialization had a positive effect on the farming household’s economic status, with soybean trade being the reason behind the economic status change. However, this positive effect did not exist at every stage of the soybean commercialization and it...[
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This study, using a unique village survey of Manchuria in the 1930s, tries to test the relationship between the commercialization of soybeans and the economic status of Manchurian villagers in the 1930s. Through constructing a difference-in-difference model with two crucial types of variations in the process of commercialization in the 1930s, namely, variations in the effects of commercialization across cohorts and regions, the dynamic effect of commercialization on the economic status of the villagers is revealed. This paper finds that commercialization had a positive effect on the farming household’s economic status, with soybean trade being the reason behind the economic status change. However, this positive effect did not exist at every stage of the soybean commercialization and it only occurred between the First World War and the Great Depression. During this period, both the price of soybeans and the volume of soybean exports increased rapidly. Under these conditions, the commercialization of soybeans brought new opportunities to elevate the farming households’ economic status.
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