Abstract
The issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers have great influence in the overall economic and social development, and the reform of farmland system is closely associated with agricultural development, rural governance and farmers' livelihood. Although the household contract responsibility system in China has promoted rural productivity, this longstanding mechanism also leads to farmland fragmentation, which means land circulation and concentration is essential to agricultural specialization and moderate scale management. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization, rural labor flows to cities on a large scale, resulting in a large number of idle farmland, which requires the reallocation of rural land resources. On the other hand, by optimizing the resource allocation efficiency of both rural land and labor force, farmland transfer can significantly improve farmer’s productivity and increase farmers' income, which is the central task of the three rural issues. Therefore, guiding the orderly transfer of land management rights has gradually become a policy choice for the government to improve the farmland system and promote farmers' income.In order to accelerate the marketization process of farmland transfer, Chinese government has emphasized on the necessity of guiding the healthy development of rural property circulation market in recent years. Various forms of rural property rights trading markets and service platforms emerge with the continuous transfer of rural labor force and the obvious growth of demand for rural property rights transaction. The establishment of the rural property rights trading platform provides a relatively market-oriented trading channel for farmland transfer. At the same time, its transparent pricing mechanism can reduce the friction of non-platform transactions in the price negotiation process, thus lowering the transaction cost of farmland private transfer. On the whole, it will encourage the transfer of land management rights, realize the optimal allocation of farmland resources, promote the development of large-scale agricultural operation and the cultivation of new operating entities, hence ultimately contributing to agricultural modernization and farmers' sustainable income generation. However, most of the platform transactions are not active in practice. It remains an opening question whether these trading platforms can play a substantive role, or just serve as a "face" project.
In this context, the purpose of this study is to explore whether the rural property circulation market has effects on guiding farmland transfer and promoting farmers' income. Specifically, based on the land transfer data of Enshi Rural Comprehensive Property Rights Trading Center and panel data of 193 villages in Enshi (Hubei province) from 2008 to 2018, this paper uses the difference-in-difference method to examine the impacts of the establishment and operation of the trading center on farmland transfer and farmers' income. The research findings are as follows. First, the trading center can stimulate the activeness of land transfer by effectively reducing the transaction costs over the transferring process. It is also able to break through the regional restrictions of land transfer, and help to promote the flow of rural land to new agricultural operation entities. Second, in terms of economic benefits, the trading center can help enhance the growth of farmers' income; and farmland transfer is an important intermediary channel for the trading center to increase farmers' income. Third, active rural financial transactions can strengthen the positive relationship between central transactions and farmland transfer, as well as between farmland transfer and farmers' income. Moreover, it has a mediating effect on the intermediary role of farmland transfer. The above results proves the significance of the rural property rights trading platform on farmland transfer marketization and farmers’ income generation. It is also indicated that the rural financial market interacts with the land transfer market in a good way.
The contributions of this paper mainly include the following aspects: First, considering the lack of empirical research on the topic of rural property circulation market, this paper makes up for the gap of empirical research in this field by confirming the role of rural property trading center in expanding the scale and improving the structure of farmland transfer. Second, based on transaction cost theory, this paper provides a more comprehensive understanding of how the rural property trading center benefits farmland transfer, which will supplement the empirical research about the influential factors of farmland transfer from the perspective of transaction costs. Third, by discussing the role of rural financial transaction in the process of farmland transfer marketization, this paper reveals the interaction between central transaction, farmland transfer and rural finance in influencing farmers' income, thus enriching the literature related to rural finance. Fourth, in terms of research methods, this paper adopts DID design, which helps to eliminate other confounding effects and solve the endogenous problem; additionally, the path analysis of property rights trading center affecting farmers' income is enlightening to explain the influential mechanism of farmland transfer marketization. Last, the research results prove the policy value of establishing a well-regulated market for rural property rights transactions. By focusing on the rural issues in poor areas, this paper will highlight the realistic significance of deepening rural reforms.
| Date of Award | 21 Aug 2020 |
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| Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Yaxuan QI (Supervisor) & Jianqiao HONG (External Supervisor) |
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