Introduction Since water is an essential input in agricultural production, the reform of water rights system can pose significant influence on water resource allocation and utilization within agri-food systems. Water rights trading has been recognized as an innovative market incentive strategy to promote sustainable water use. This study investigates the role of China's water rights trading policy played in promoting the green water use efficiency of grain production.Methods A three-stage DEA method is adopted to evaluate the green water use efficiency with a provincial panel data from 2006 to...
