制度、农地供求与农地使用权市场发育——以江西省为例

通过实证分析,本文认为,在土地流转过程中,我国农村现存的农地制度没有阻碍农地使用权市场的发育,延长农地承包期并不必然创造有效的农地市场和提高农地利用效率。现行农地市场发育缓慢的根本原因在于农地供给不足。建立有效的农地市场不仅取决于农地制度创新和切实保护农地产权,而且,更重要的是取决于非农产业的发展、农村剩余劳动力的转移、社会保障制度的建立以及完善的农村金融和保险市场等制度环境。     

Effect of personality traits on smallholders’ land renting behavior: Theory and evidence from the North China Plain

This study investigates the effect of smallholders’ personality traits on their land rental market decisions. We develop a conceptual framework and show that these internal factors could affect smallholders’ land rental market participation beyond institutional and socio-demographic factors. Our empirical analysis is based on a survey of 2119 rural households collected in the North China Plain. We find that smallholders with a higher level of openness are more active in participating in the farmland rental market. Moreover, internal locus of control plays a significant role in explaining smallholders’ land renting behavior. We further show that need for achievement mediates the link between internal locus of control and smallholder’s intention to rent land, indicating that fostering a higher level of internal locus of control—and subsequently achievement desire—could play an important role in promoting smallholders’ land-renting behavior. More generally, our results imply that taking rural smallholders’ personality traits into account in designing land rental policies may increase the effectiveness of policies aimed at promoting land rental market participation among smallholders and incubating crop farm scale enlargement in rural China.     

Rural to urban land conversion in China — How large is the over-conversion and what are its welfare implications?

The current system of converting farmland to urban land use in China can be characterized as a hybrid system that combines government controls with market-based transfers. In this paper we argue that this hybrid governance structure causes an over-conversion of farmland from the rural to the urban sector, as compared to a competitive market situation, and a welfare reallocation that discriminates against farmland owners. We develop a partial equilibrium model that can be used to examine the impact of the current hybrid governance structure on the over-conversion of farmland and to analyze the welfare changes for different groups of actors and the resulting net social welfare loss. Using a dataset with detailed information on farmland acquisitions and urban land transactions in Yingtan City in Jiangxi Province, we illustrate how this framework can be applied. Our results indicate an over-conversion of 33.5% of the total converted farmland in this city between 1999 and 2003. The welfare of farmland owners affected by the conversion decreased by 1.38 billion RMB, while the net social welfare loss equaled more than 270 million RMB during the same period. The local government obtained 380 million RMB of revenues by re-selling farmland as urban land through competitive conveyance mechanisms between 2002 and 2005, while the manufacturing sector gained an estimated 280 million RMB from buying land use rights at relatively low prices. We conclude that the current policy of increasing urban land conveyance through competitive mechanisms does not address two major underlying causes of over-conversion, and that protection of farmland would be better served by replacing the current hybrid rural to urban land market structure by a competitive land market.     

Access to credit and farmland rental market participation: Evidence from rural China

In this study, we analyze the impact of access to credit on farmland rental market participation of rural households. The study uses a nationally representative survey data of China Family Panel Studies and an endogenous switching probit model that accounts for selection bias for both observed and unobserved factors. Findings reveal that access to credit stimulates farmers' decisions to participate in farmland rental markets by increasing the likelihood of renting in and renting out farmland by about 10% and 20%, respectively. Results also reveal that the impact of access to credit on farmland rental market participation is heterogeneous when it comes to the age of the operator and and geographic locations of farmers. We show that younger credit users have a higher probability of renting in farmland, while their older counterparts have a higher probability of renting out farmland. Besides, credit users residing in central China have a higher probability of renting in farmland, while those living in eastern China have a higher likelihood of renting out farmland. Our findings highlight the importance of improving farmers' access to credit in facilitating the development of rural farmland rental markets.     

Impact of land tenure policy on agricultural investments in China: Evidence from a panel data study

The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of changes in China's rural land policy on agricultural investments. Dramatic changes occurred in China's rural land policies after 2000, including the extension of rural land contractual period, restriction of land reallocation among villages and villagers groups, elimination of agricultural taxes for responsibility land, and rapid development of rural land rental markets. These changes have given farmers more secure tenure on collectively controlled responsibility land and have strengthened farmers' income rights for responsibility lands, incentivizing them to increase their investments on responsibility lands. A panel data method was used to quantitatively investigate the impact of land policy changes on agricultural investment. We considered the application of organic fertilizer as an indicator for long-term agricultural investment, and compared the use of organic fertilizer between private plots and responsibility lands operated by the same household. The results showed that the difference in organic fertilizer use between private plots and responsibility land for the same household has become smaller from 2000 to 2008. Our findings suggest that recent changes in rural land policies have provided farmers incentives to increase land quality investment on their responsibility lands.     

Rural household migration in China – the roles of actual and perceived tenure security

Migration can make an important contribution to rural poverty reduction and overall productivity growth, but it may be limited by prevailing rural land tenure arrangements. Since 1998, the Chinese government has implemented a number of land tenure reforms with the aim of improving the tenure security and the transferability of land. Although these reforms enhanced legal tenure security, it is not clear to what extent they remove existing land tenure bottlenecks in migration. Both actual tenure security, i.e. local implementation of laws that warrant tenure security, and household perceptions of tenure security are likely to play a role. In this paper we examine the impacts of actual and perceived tenure security on rural household migration in China, taking into account the degree of development of land rental markets. We argue that actual and perceived tenure security can have both positive and negative effects on migration decisions and that the presence of land rental markets may modify these effects. A two-step control function approach that controls for endogeneity of tenure security perceptions is applied to household and village-level data collected in Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Liaoning provinces and Chongqing municipality. We find that both actual and perceived tenure security affect migration, but the impact of perceived tenure security measured by land reallocation expectations is much stronger and is positive, whereas the independent impact of actual tenure security is negative. Households perceiving a lower risk of losing land when one or more members migrate are more inclined to migrate, independent of the availability of land rental markets in their villages. Actual tenure security, as measured by absence of land reallocations and possession of land certificates, has an independent negative effect on migration only in villages with underdeveloped land rental markets.     

Land, Factor Markets, and Inequality in Rural China: Historical Evidence

Drawing on a unique household-level data set from northeast China in the 1930s, this paper explores the connections between the distribution of land, factor markets, and income distribution. We test whether patterns of income inequality were consistent with the predictions of a market-clearing, neoclassical model linking land and labor endowments, through factor markets to household income. While the model is consistent with some features in the data, we reject the hypothesis that factor markets worked perfectly and find support for the historian's intuition regarding the disproportionate impact of land inequality in the countryside. Nevertheless, where markets were more active, especially land rental markets, excess returns to land were diminished and inequality was lowest. This suggests that factor market development played a positive role in reducing inequality in rural China.     

社会资本、农地流转与农户消费扩张

中国农户消费转型升级引发各方关注,但鲜有从社会资本的视角探讨农地流转对农户消费的影响及其微观作用机理。文章在理论层面分析了农地流转通过影响农户生计资本变动和生计策略调整对农户消费的传导机制,并基于中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）三期面板数据,定量评估了农地流转对农户消费影响的社会资本效应。结果表明：（1）我国农户消费基尼系数总体呈缩窄趋势,但农地转出农户相比农地转入农户具有更高的人均消费支出及消费不均等程度;（2）农地流转能够影响农户关键自然资本改变和生计策略调整,从而显著提高农户消费水平,且参与农地流转农户相比未参与农地流转农户具有更高的消费动机;（3）社会资本在农户农地转入和转出过程中对农户消费存在微观中介效应,即社会资本越高的农户参与农地流转的概率越大,且能够通过提高农地转出户非农就业机会和扩大其多元化收入来源,间接提升农户消费水平。在精准扶贫和乡村振兴战略协同背景下,应积极有序推进农地适度规模经营,促进农地转出户非农就业,并强化农户社会资本建设,提高农户多元化收入,从而全面助推农村消费转型升级。     

农地流转：历史、困境与制度创新

文章采用激励理论、合约理论的分析方法,探讨了中国农村土地流转发展缓慢的原因：农户土地转让激励不足、关系型合约限制了农地转让的发展。只有通过完善农户转让的激励机制,实现由关系型合约向规则型合约的转变,才能真正使农地流转起来。     

Determinants of technical efficiency and farmers’ crop choice rationality: A case study of rural Gansu,China

Land exchange based on market transactions in which lessors and lessees participate voluntarily not only makes them better off but also enhances the overall efficiency of land use and agricultural production. However, it is worthwhile to empirically explore the effect of land rental on overall technical efficiency in the context of Chinese agriculture because non-farm household producers have increasingly entered the farming business as cultivators. If such producers underperform farm households in terms of efficiency, land consolidation does not necessarily deliver the desired outcome. This study demonstrates that the development of land rental markets improves agricultural technical efficiency at the aggregate level. Another important issue addressed in this study is to examine farmers’ crop choice rationality. China offers an interesting case in this respect. This is because, while the central government has long strived to maintain a high grain self-sufficiency rate, the relative prices of farm products have recently moved in favor of non-grain products. Our empirical result suggests that there is room for further increase in farm revenues of Gansu’s producers by shifting resources away from cereal toward horticultural production.     

China's Surplus Agricultural Labour Force: It's Size,Transfer, Prospects for Absorption and Effects of the Double-Track Economic System*

The commune economy had two basic characteristics: one was its three-grade pyramid-type structure of organisation which integrated government administration and economic management; and the other was its “self-sufficient” and “closed-door” character. Under this system farmers had no free choice about their occupation and place of residence. With the collapse of the commune system, institutional reorganisation of China's rural economy occurred. Farmers had more choice now about their production, their occupation and place of residence based on the development of a modern commodity and market economy. In this process of institutional reorganisation, transfer of surplus agricultural labour is a key factor. The concept of the agricultural labour surplus is discussed and discussions in English of this concept and associated theory and policy are reviewed. With reform of rural economy and improvement of agricultural labour productivity, the quantity of surplus labour in rural China has increased. Greater labour absorption is required in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, but particularly in non-agricultural sectors. In China, several impediments to transfer of surplus agricultural labour still exist. The transfer of surplus agricultural labour in contemporary China occurs in the context of a nationwide “double-track” economic system (a market-oriented economic system harnessed to a centrally planned and controlled economic system) and a “dual economy” in which modern industries exist alongside a traditional indigenous agricultural economy. Income gains provide the main motivation for farmers to transfer to non-agricultural activities. It is the income difference between farming and non-farming activity, not whether the marginal labour productivity in farming is zero that is important. By building and developing free or open markets one provides a suitable climate for labour transfer and migration. In the absence of free or open markets, farmers have little free choice. The continuing system of household registration is a serious institutional barrier to transfer or migration by farmers. Furthermore, the system of equal farmland contracts also hinders the process of transfer or migration. This might be overcome by allowing the transfer of rights to use farmland and facilitating “part-time” transfer of agricultural labour. Withdrawal of “surplus labour” from farming can cause grain output to drop. This can occur because if “better” farmers leave agriculture, the quality of farm labourers as a whole declines and because of a rigid price system which discriminates against agricultural products. While current transfers of surplus agricultural labour in China may well have increased income inequality between rural residents and between regions, if there had been greater freedom of migration this might have resulted in less income inequality. To the extent that market reform in China has resulted in greater freedom of economic choice, it appears to have increased the level of production obtained from China's limited resources. This is not to say that the market system will result in a perfect solution even though the economic results can be expected to be much superior to the commune system adopted in the past by China.     

Land rental market, off-farm employment and agricultural production in Southeast China: A plot-level case study

This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment, input use, and rice yields for 215 plots cultivated by 52 households in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province. Our findings show that households that rent extra land are relatively more productive, but contradict results of earlier studies which found that tenure status of plots affects the level of land investments. We further find that off-farm employment does not significantly affect rice yields. This result contradicts those of earlier studies which found that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment dominates the positive income effect. Another novel finding is that people working locally off-farm tend to switch from green manure planting towards the use of organic manure on their rice plots. We conclude that policies that will further stimulate the development of land rental markets, which is still in its infancy, can contribute significantly to higher rice production in Southeast China. Another implication of our results is that worries about the negative impact that the continuously growing off-farm employment may have on China's goal to remain self-sufficient in grain production are less relevant at the moment for the region examined in our study.     

Does Land Rent between Acquaintances Deviate from the Reference Point? Evidence from Rural China

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates whether acquaintance networks influence the deviation of land rent from the reference point advanced by Hart and Moore. The coefficient of variance and the range of land rent are used to represent the degree of deviation from the reference point. Based on village‐level data from the 2015 China Household Finance Survey, the estimated results indicate that land rent between acquaintances is more likely to significantly deviate from the reference point. Although rental transactions are conducted between acquaintances, larger deviations from the reference are also associated with a longer time to close deals. Our analysis using household‐level data further supports our findings, indicating that land rental markets embedded in the acquaintance networks of rural China are in a transition period and have characteristics of both relational and market orientation. The policy makers should introduce more outer village lessees or other market ingredients to increase the voluntary marketization of land rentals inside acquaintance networks.     

Remittances and expenditure patterns of the left behinds in rural China

This paper investigates how private transfers from internal migration in China affect the expenditure behavior of families left behind in rural areas. Using data from the Rural–Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) survey, we assess the impact of remittances sent to rural households on consumption-type and investment-type expenditures. We apply propensity score matching to account for the selection of households into receiving remittances, and estimate average treatment effects on the treated. We find that remittances supplement income in rural China and lead to increased consumption rather than increased investment. Moreover, we find evidence of a strong negative impact on education expenditures, which could be detrimental to sustaining investment in human capital in poor rural areas in China.     

土地经营权流转、耕地配置与农民收入增长

文章基于全国8省农户微观调查数据,探讨了中国农村土地流转市场发育在优化耕地资源配置和提高农民收入方面的作用。实证结论表明,现行土地流转起到了改进耕地配置效率的作用,有助于那些具有较高农业生产能力水平但初始土地禀赋有限的农户获得更多的土地。对农户参与土地流转所可能获得收益大小的进一步估计显示,土地流转同时显著提高了农户家庭的收入水平,在平均意义下土地流转能使任意样本农户家庭和已流转土地农户家庭的总收入分别增加19%和26%左右。此外,文章分别从土地转入和土地转出,检验了土地流转增收效应的非对称性特征,发现在土地流转过程中,转入土地农户家庭的收入增长幅度要显著高于转出土地的农户家庭。     

Land fragmentation and farm productivity in China in the 1990s

The main objective of this study is to examine the effects of fragmentation on farm productivity in China and to discuss policy implications. Some earlier work has questioned the importance of the economic costs of land fragmentation in developing economies. It has been argued that policymakers should focus instead on reducing the root causes of fragmentation: inefficiencies in land, labour, credit, and food markets. Our results, using a more recent and larger dataset from a household survey in China, find that fragmentation does have an economic cost in China. Production functions are estimated for each of the major grain crops in the sample provinces. We also argue that to reduce the economic costs, land consolidation in China should be undertaken with less government intervention. More attention should be given to the establishment of markets for land (or land use rights) and improvements in rural credit and grain markets.     

Rural Land,Emerging Rental Land Markets and Public Policy in Ethiopia

Abstract: While farmers today access land mainly through administrative‐based land distribution, transactions in rental markets are on the rise. Different rental contracts are informally arranged with varied land use and transfer rights and degree of enforcement. These contracts are often interlocked to overcome the problem of incomplete or missing non‐land factor markets. The empirical evidence is thin but shows mixed records on performance of rental markets. Transactions in rental markets provide an additional venue to access land, reduce disparity in distribution of area of land operated, correct imbalances in factor proportions at farm level, and partly substitute for missing or incomplete factor markets. However, rights to rental land are restricted and poorly enforced, and markets are localized and thinly traded. While participation in rental markets is potentially welfare improving, increasing scarcity of land and demands for higher rent, a fee for right to rent land, payment in cash, farming skills and experience, and proof of no‐default are tightening conditions to access to land, particularly to the young poor farmers. Public policy has an important role in formalizing and enhancing the development of rental markets through strengthening enforceable long‐term security of tenure, providing legal cover to rental contracts, allowing tradability of long‐term use rights through rental markets, and providing the institutional mechanism to enforce contracts and reduce the burden of self‐enforcement. These policy measures need to be nested within a broad framework of market development, and informed by policy research and experimentation.     

河南省欠发达农区土地流转调查与对策研究

在经济全球化大背景下,作为农业大省的河南省,其农产品在国际竞争中并无突出的比较优势,分散化的家庭经营方式在激烈的市场竞争下凸显不足,农地适度规模经营则是增强农产品竞争力的有效方法之一。农村土地规范化的流转是推进农地适度规模经营的重要举措,河南省开封、南阳等六地市实地调查结果显示河南省农地流转存在规模偏小、方式单一等问题,在此基础上提出适合河南省农地流转的模式选择及规范农地流转的建议。     

Liberalizing rural-to-urban construction land transfers in China: Distribution effects

China's land market is characterized by a dual urban-rural system, with the government in control of rural-urban land transfers. In recent years, different types of pilot projects have been implemented to experiment with liberalizing markets for rural-urban construction land transfers. The objective of this study is to gain insights into the distributional effects of three different types of land liberalization rules by making a comparative analysis of three pilot projects carried out under each of these liberalization rules. We find that transfers facing more liberalized rules result in higher shares of land revenue flowing to the rural sector and thereby reduce the ruralurban income gap. But direct transfers between rural and urban land users also contribute to growing income inequality within the rural sector, as households living in urban fringes benefit relatively more from such transfers. A tradable quota system can reduce the impact of location on the price of land, and thereby contribute to a more equal distribution of the revenues of rural-urban land transfers within the rural sector.     

Sustainable natural resource use in rural China: Recent trends and policies

In this paper we provide an overview of recent trends in the availability and quality of land and water resources in rural China, and examine the common presumption that rural resources are rapidly degrading in China. Data based on consistent definitions and measurement methods that have recently become available are used to that end. In addition, we analyse the impact of new policy initiatives to introduce market-based instruments and new institutions to address land degradation and water scarcity problems.We find that the decline in cultivated area has accelerated in the beginning of the new century. Ecological recovery programs, not urbanization and industrialization, are the major factors causing this decline. Ecological recovery programs are also a major force behind the increase in forest land area and the reduction of water erosion. Modest successes can be observed in the protection of wetlands and (until the mid-1980s) for the average quality of cultivated land. On the other hand, degradation of natural grassland and wind erosion have become much more severe in recent decades.In northern China, particularly in the 3-H (Hai and Luan, Huai and Huang) river basins, the availability of water has tightened. Groundwater tables have fallen considerably in the Hai river basin, because farmers increasingly rely on groundwater for irrigation. Evidence on other parts of northern China is mixed. Pollution of surface water is getting worse since the beginning of the 1990s in two major lakes in southern China and until recently in the rivers in northern China. Water quality problems in the larger rivers in southern China are less severe and getting less. These problems are to a large extent caused by agriculture-based non-point source pollution, especially in the major lakes and reservoirs.The sloping land conversion program, water pricing, and the establishment of water user associations and payments for environmental service projects are used as cases to examine the introduction of market-based instruments and new institutions. We argue that less government interference in the implementation of these instruments and institutions is likely to enhance ecological as well the economic benefits. Moreover, supportive measures to improve the functioning of land and labor markets are usually needed to ensure the sustainability of the impact of interventions.