Mismatch: Land reallocations, recovery land rental and land rental market development in rural China
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative impacts of full-scale land reallocation (FLR) and partial-scale land reallocation (PLR) on household land rental behavior in rural China.
Design/methodology/approach
Probit model, Tobit model and Semi-parametric model are used to provide empirical evidences.
Findings
Drawing upon an unique farm survey in 2003, the authors find that in rural China, FLR is more likely to follow egalitarian rule and PLR takes productivity of households into consideration. Econometric analysis provides two main findings. First, FLR has positive effect on household land rental behavior, possibly because egalitarian FLR creates a mismatch between household agricultural ability and land size and after FLR households have to participate in land rental market to adjust the mismatch. Second, PLR has negative effect on household land rental behavior which supports that land reallocation and land rental market are substitutes (Brandt et al., 2004).
Originality/value
The main contribution of this study is to show that FLR and PLR in rural China are motivated by two different rationales (i.e. FLR by egalitarian concerns and PLR by efficiency concerns).
Keywords
Acknowledgements
JEL Classifications — Q15, Q13
The author thanks the editor, Xian Xin, and two anonymous referees for comments which substantially improved this paper and is particularly grateful to Ying Bai for his help and many suggestions on earlier drafts. The author also thanks Chicheng Ma, Nan Li, Huadong Song, Edward Jow-ching Tu, Yang Yao, Satoru Shimokawa and seminar participants at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology for their helpful comments, James Kai-sing Kung for making available the data set for analysis. A previous version of this paper was circulated under the title “Land rental market development in rural China.” The author alone is responsible for any remaining errors.
Citation
Che, Y. (2014), "Mismatch: Land reallocations, recovery land rental and land rental market development in rural China", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 229-247. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-06-2012-0070
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited