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Education development is a critical component for a modern economy as the illiteracy rate can hinder economic growth. The illiteracy rate in China has decreased rapidly since 1980s, but there still exists an imbalance in distribution of educational resources among different regions. In order to explore the impacts of education quality on regional economic growth, we employ a quadratic directional distance function to derive the shadow prices of illiteracy for 31 provinces in China. In this case, shadow price is interpreted as the opportunity cost of reducing the illiteracy rate. The results show that the highest shadow price of illiteracy is observed in the middle region. Looking at individual provinces, Zhejiang shows the lowest shadow price of illiteracy, whereas Shanxi features the highest one. The shadow price of illiteracy showed a downward trend in the eastern region, while increasing trends were observed for the middle and the western regions during 2005-2011. Moreover, the gap between the eastern region on the one side and the middle and the western regions on the other side has been increasing.

Socioeconomic development requires meeting the goals of food security. Yield risk constitutes an important factor of farming business viability. As the Central and Eastern European countries have been affected by both economic and environmental transformations, there is a need to develop a robust methodology for assessment of yield risks in order to propose convincing guidelines for both farmers and government institutions in regards to risk management and viability of agricultural business in general. This paper attempts to devise non-parametric measures of yield risk for Lithuanian crop farming. The research covers the period of 2000–2015. County-level data from Statistics Lithuania are employed for the analysis. The non-parametric analysis of yield risk relies on information diffusion theory and linear moving average. The results indicate that there exist differences in yield trends, yield loss rates and yield risk among crops and regions. Maize, buckwheat and winter rape exhibited the highest yield risk. These results shed light on the extent of yield risks underlying crop farming in Lithuania and, to a certain extent, can be contrasted to situation in Central and Eastern European countries. Indeed, the obtained results can be applied in decision making at different levels of management.