Researcher Kaixing Huang and Co-authors Publish Paper in the Journal of Development Economics

Release date：2026/03/25　　Source： CCAP

Recently, a paper entitled The Phantom Menace in Agriculture: How Lagged Droughts Distort Input Decisions and Create Environmental Deadweight Loss, co-authored by Researcher Kaixing Huang (corresponding author), Professor Dingqiang Sun and PhD candidate Xueting Qie from Nanjing Agricultural University, was published in the Journal of Development Economics. A leading authoritative journal in the field of development economics, it features original research papers covering all aspects of development economics.

Based on micro-level data, this study identifies a significant and novel correlate of excessive chemical fertilizer use: farmers' responses to lagged droughts. The research finds that while drought shocks in any given year are temporally independent, a drought in the preceding year leads to a 17.6% increase in fertilizer application in the current year, with no corresponding positive impact on crop yields. A preliminary extrapolation indicates that this behavioral response may result in an annual overuse of 1.15 million tons of chemical fertilizer in China, imposing a monetary cost of 509 million US dollars, causing water pollution affecting 2-7 billion cubic meters of water bodies, and generating 9.3 million tons of carbon emissions. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that investing in irrigation infrastructure, consolidating land to high-productivity farmers, and promoting drought-tolerant crop varieties are the key approaches to addressing this complex issue.

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