Digital Finance and Agricultural Productivity Growth: Comparative Evidence from China and Kazakhstan

The digital transformation of the agricultural sector strengthens the role of digital infrastructure and financial inclusion as factors of productivity growth in agriculture in the context of structural modernization of the economy. The aim of the study is to assess the impact of digital infrastructure on agricultural productivity and to identify the cross—country heterogeneity of effects in economies with different levels of digitalization and institutional development. A balanced panel for 2011-2023 (26 observations) based on data from the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation was used. In the combined model, digital infrastructure demonstrates a positive and statistically significant relationship with performance (β = 0.7626; p < 0.01), with a high quality of fit (r2 = 0.946). The exclusion of pandemic years confirms the stability of the effect (β = 0.744; p < 0.01; r2 = 0.937). The cross-country analysis revealed heterogeneity: in China, the effect of digital infrastructure is positive and significant (β = 0.421; p < 0.01), while in Kazakhstan the coefficient is negative and weakly significant at the level of 10% (β = -0.483; p = 0.092), indicating differences in institutional readiness and the level of digital maturity. The results obtained confirm the importance of digital infrastructure in improving the efficiency of the agricultural sector, but demonstrate that the institutional and structural environment determines the scale and direction of this impact. 

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