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Reallocating wealth? Insecure property rights and agricultural investment in rural China

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  • Leight, Jessica

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of village-level land reallocations in China on household economic outcomes. The primary objective is to analyze the effect of short-term differences in tenure security in the year of a reallocation, employing the past history of land shifts as a source of exogenous variation in current tenure security. The results show that a decrease in the probability of losing the current plot yields an increase in agricultural inputs and production with no change in non-agricultural investments, conditional on household fixed effects that control for any unobserved and time-invariant characteristics of the household. This suggests that even small increases in the security of tenure enjoyed by households could yield benefits in terms of greater agricultural output.

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  • Leight, Jessica, 2016. "Reallocating wealth? Insecure property rights and agricultural investment in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 207-227.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:40:y:2016:i:c:p:207-227
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2016.07.014
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    4. Gao, Xuwen & Shi, Xinjie & Fang, Shile, 2021. "Property rights and misallocation: Evidence from land certification in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
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    7. Kacana Sipangule, 2017. "Agribusinesses, smallholder tenure security, and plot-level investments: Evidence from rural Tanzania," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-106, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Zhao, Xiaoxue, 2020. "Land and labor allocation under communal tenure: Theory and evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    9. Hong, Yan-Zhen & Chang, Hung-Hao & Dai, Yong-Wu, 2018. "Is deregulation of forest land use rights transactions associated with economic well-being and labor allocation of farm households? Empirical evidence in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 694-701.
    10. Gao, Li & Zhang, Wendong & Mei, Yingdan & Sam, Abdoul G. & Song, Yu & Jin, Shuqin, 2018. "Do farmers adopt fewer conservation practices on rented land? Evidence from straw retention in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 609-621.
    11. Shengmin Sun & Qiang Chen, 2020. "Household responsibility system and China's agricultural: Growth revisited: Addressing endogenous institutional change," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 537-558, October.
    12. Jing Li, 2019. "Land tenure and agricultural investments in China: a meta-regression analysis," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(2), pages 329-347, September.
    13. Kacana Sipangule, 2017. "Agribusinesses, smallholder tenure security, and plot-level investments: Evidence from rural Tanzania," WIDER Working Paper Series 106, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
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