How Does Information and Communication Technology Influence Agricultural Development: Evidence from China

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as the world-wide application of mobile phones and internet have contributed substantially to the fast-growing world economy in unprecedented ways. Our research focuses on the influence of those two technologies and tries to answer the question, “how does ICT influence agricultural output in China?” Through an empirical analysis utilizing panel data from 27 provinces of China across a period of 10 years, our results indicate that in spite of our previous prediction that those two technologies contribute positively to the development of Chinese agriculture, we see negative influence of mobile phones and positive influence of internet. Possible explanations and further discussions are provided