学术前沿 | 你知道吗？在数据分析领域，农经学者是最早一批“吃螃蟹的人”
启研学社由知名学者担任学术顾问，高校师生与企研数据科学团队联合组建，以大数据资源及相关技术助力中国学术与智库研究为宗旨的研究组织。团队当前的主要目标是挖掘经济社会大数据资源在学术和智库领域的应用价值，开展学术大数据治理研究，以及探索大数据分析技术融入中国经济社会研究的可行进路。
作者：DAVID ZILBERMAN
翻译说明：（1）本（系列）论文翻译稿由启研学社实习生完成，旨在帮助本科生或低年级研究生交流经验研究的方法；（2）本翻译稿仅用于学习交流，请勿用于商业目的。
Agricultural economists have embodied the notions of applied economics for a long time. They have used economic principles to address real-world problems, integrating economics and scientific knowledge.Applied economics tends to be multidisciplinary and develop applied concepts, theories, and tools. Some, like human capital, diffusion of innovation, contingent valuation, and numerous numerical and econometric techniques have spread throughout economics. Agricultural economic research has been data intensive, and improved information technologies strengthen this tendency. Yet data without theory is of limited use and coevolution of theory and data are essential. Empirical analysis should incorporate quantitative information as well as narratives. We are challenged to understand the coevolution of business, supply chains, and technology, and how they are affected by policies and affect markets. Research should integrate agriculture, energy, and the environment and develop tools to analyze and regulate the emerging bio-economy integrating biotech and infotech.
Key words: Big data;bio-economy;theory;relevance1.关于农业经济学，我们需要了解什么？
2.农业经济学与经济学是如何演变的？
（The Evolution of Agricultural Economics and Economics）
Most classical theorists lived in a world where agriculture was the dominant industry, and therefore introduced theory based on a competitive equilibrium that characterized agriculture. In a way, classical economics is actually agricultural economics. The discipline of agricultural economics started from the merger of two fields—farm management and farm economics (Runge 2006). From the beginning, agricultural economics emphasized a few micro elements: guiding farmers on land use allocation, production decisions, and marketing. On a macro-level, this field attempted to understand the peculiar behavior of the farm sector, in particular to make sense of the farm crises and poverty, etc. From its onset, agricultural economics was empirical and data-oriented, and some of the early applications of statistical techniques in economics were on agricultural problems. As in the example of Keynes, where real world observations led to real applied theories, one of the features of agricultural economics is that, similar to macroeconomics, observations and attempts to understand real-life patterns have resulted in new theoretical and conceptual developments that really change economics as a whole. Thus, while it may seem that in economics there is a division of labor between general economic theorists who develop basic principles and tools and applied economists who use them, in reality, the relationship is more complex. There is the mainstream of economic theory that has basic rules and principles, and applied fields that integrate economics with specific areas of the realworld. Applied fields may combine principles of economics with principles of other disciplines, but these sub-fields are major contributors to mainstream economic theory and practice. Agricultural economics has a very successful record of changing the way economists think and work. Agricultural economists were among the first to pursue and analyze microdata and interact with economics agents as they developed their analysis. To some extent, agricultural economists have emphasized big data even before big data was “cool.” The work of Cochrane (1979) provides a perspective on agricultural policy in the United States and in general. Cochrane views the history of U.S. agriculture as a process of economic development with a few distinct stages. First, the early period consisting of the seventeenth to early eighteenth century is characterized by the search for appropriate technologies. There followed a period of expansion and increase in land base between 1750–1890. Cochrane suggests that, during this period, major policies that affected agriculture were those of homesteading that provided farmers with an incentive to settle with private property rights, as well as public policies that built infrastructure like the railroads, which allowed for major settlements. This was followed by a period of intensification from 1890 to the present. Again, government support of research and investment in infrastructure, for example water projects, were the key to the agricultural development of this period. Cochrane’s work suggests that the growth and success of U.S. agricultural policies was a result of complementarity between private sector entrepreneurship and public sector investment in research and infrastructure and the provision of private property rights. But this period resulted in unintended consequences, including excess supply as well as environmental externalities. The combination of an expanding agricultural land-base and increased productivity resulted in large volumes of cheap food that resulted in low farm incomes. Production on marginal land and excessive use of chemicals resulted in the deterioration of land resources and water quality. Addressing these problems were some of the major challenges of agricultural policies in the twentieth century. The first paper published in the American Economic Review was by a female agricultural economist, K. Coman (1911), which analyzed the economic impacts of water rights systems that were the result of government development and reclamation policies in the early period of U.S. agriculture. The field of agricultural policy, which investigates the “macro” of agricultural economics, has evolved to address economic challenges in managing agricultural and resource sectors in developed and developing countries, and to address issues of trade in development. In parallel to the policy analysis, there has been much emphasis on solving economics and management at the farm- and agribusiness-level.Most classical theorists lived in a world where agriculture was the dominant industry, and therefore introduced theory based on a competitive equilibrium that characterized agriculture. In a way, classical economics is actually agricultural economics. The discipline of agricultural economics started from the merger of two fields—farm management and farm economics (Runge 2006). From the beginning, agricultural economics emphasized a few micro elements: guiding farmers on land use allocation, production decisions, and marketing. On a macro-level, this field attempted to understand the peculiar behavior of the farm sector, in particular to make sense of the farm crises and poverty, etc. From its onset, agricultural economics was empirical and data-oriented, and some of the early applications of statistical techniques in economics were on agricultural problems. As in the example of Keynes, where real world observations led to real applied theories, one of the features of agricultural economics is that, similar to macroeconomics, observations and attempts to understand real-life patterns have resulted in new theoretical and conceptual developments that really change economics as a whole. Thus, while it may seem that in economics there is a division of labor between general economic theorists who develop basic principles and tools and applied economists who use them, in reality, the relationship is more complex. There is the mainstream of economic theory that has basic rules and principles, and applied fields that integrate economics with specific areas of the realworld. Applied fields may combine principles of economics with principles of other disciplines, but these sub-fields are major contributors to mainstream economic theory and practice. Agricultural economics has a very successful record of changing the way economists think and work. Agricultural economists were among the first to pursue and analyze microdata and interact with economics agents as they developed their analysis. To some extent, agricultural economists have emphasized big data even before big data was “cool.” The work of Cochrane (1979) provides a perspective on agricultural policy in the United States and in general. Cochrane views the history of U.S. agriculture as a process of economic development with a few distinct stages. First, the early period consisting of the seventeenth to early eighteenth century is characterized by the search for appropriate technologies. There followed a period of expansion and increase in land base between 1750–1890. Cochrane suggests that, during this period, major policies that affected agriculture were those of homesteading that provided farmers with an incentive to settle with private property rights, as well as public policies that built infrastructure like the railroads, which allowed for major settlements. This was followed by a period of intensification from 1890 to the present. Again, government support of research and investment in infrastructure, for example water projects, were the key to the agricultural development of this period. Cochrane’s work suggests that the growth and success of U.S. agricultural policies was a result of complementarity between private sector entrepreneurship and public sector investment in research and infrastructure and the provision of private property rights. But this period resulted in unintended consequences, including excess supply as well as environmental externalities. The combination of an expanding agricultural land-base and increased productivity resulted in large volumes of cheap food that resulted in low farm incomes. Production on marginal land and excessive use of chemicals resulted in the deterioration of land resources and water quality. Addressing these problems were some of the major challenges of agricultural policies in the twentieth century. The first paper published in the American Economic Review was by a female agricultural economist, K. Coman (1911), which analyzed the economic impacts of water rights systems that were the result of government development and reclamation policies in the early period of U.S. agriculture. The field of agricultural policy, which investigates the “macro” of agricultural economics, has evolved to address economic challenges in managing agricultural and resource sectors in developed and developing countries, and to address issues of trade in development. In parallel to the policy analysis, there has been much emphasis on solving economics and management at the farm- and agribusiness-level.
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