Public data openness, agricultural enterprises upgrading and agricultural production: evidence from China

Public data resources may represent a new driver of agricultural transformation. Using county-level panel data from China covering the period 2010–2020, this paper treats the launch of government open-data platforms as an exogenous shock to evaluate the effects of data openness on agricultural production. The results reveal a nuanced pattern in which open public data reduce agricultural output while increasing productivity. The decline in output mainly reflects reductions in labor, land, and fertilizer use, whereas productivity gains have not yet fully compensated for these declines, highlighting transitional frictions in the shift from extensive to intensive production. Over time, however, the negative effect on output gradually weakens, suggesting that productivity improvements increasingly emerge as the sector adapts to modernization. Mechanism analysis further indicates that data openness affects agricultural enterprises through both extensive and intensive margins. On the extensive margin, data openness accelerates the exit of inefficient and noncompliant firms, thereby reducing the number of active enterprises and lowering input use. On the intensive margin, data openness improves agricultural total factor productivity by reducing the prevalence of zombie firms, increasing the scale and efficiency of new entrants, and strengthening the innovation capacity and industry–university–research collaboration of existing enterprises.