ISS professor Max Spoor, Adam Komarek (lead author, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington), Shuyi Feng and Xiaoping Shi (Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China), a joint article in China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol 9 (1): 93-110, entitled: 'Income implications of political capital and agricultural land use in western China'.
The article explores the expansion of agricultural production into marginal lands, known as 'wasteland', and examines the association between political capital, household income, and using additional marginal lands for agriculture in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China.
The paper explores the role of political capital in an agricultural household setting. The preliminary results of the study suggest that wasteland usage has a positive association with income, and that household political capital, in the form of Communist Party membership or being a village cadre, correlates with wasteland usage because it improves access to irrigation water.
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The article ca be found at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/CAER-03-2015-0030