درمورد ارزش معاملات حقوق استفاده از زمین در مناطق روستایی چین

Land Use Rights (LURs) in China affect farmers’ productivity through investment incentives and the way land is allocated across households. LURs have implication and trade-offs between equity and growth. This paper examines how Chinese farmers might respond if the Chinese government made it legal for farmers to buy or sell LURs. Livelihood choices, labor substitution, market infrastructure, a lack of property right protections, entrepreneurship, bureaucracy, and political will are all influential factors that will determine whether such a program would work. The purpose of this paper is to examine the economics of transaction in LURs, estimate the value at which LURs could transact in equilibrium, and to analyze factors that would affect these price changes. We evaluate farmer’s intention to buy and sell LURs and how much they are willing to pay and receive for LURs.

The Chinese government has considered the possibility of liberalizing farmers’ ability to transact Land Use Rights (LURs), including selling and mortgaging the rights, to boost rural development and support urbanization. The issuance of a policy concerning the Advancement of Rural Reform and Development approved by the CPC Central Committee on October 12 2008,1 allowed farmers to “lease their contracted farmland or transfer their LURs” to boost the scale of operation for farm production and provide funds for them to start new businesses. Consequently, markets for the lease of contracted farmland and the transfer of farm LURs shall be set up and improved to allow farmers to sub-contract, lease, exchange and swap their LURs, or joint share-holding entities with their farmland. Such transfers of land-use rights must be voluntarily participated by farmers, with adequate payment and in accordance with the law” ( Chinareview.cn, 2008 and Dean and Damm-Luhr, 2010).2 Although the policy does not make explicit use of the terms ‘buy’ or ‘sell’, from an economic point of what is offered in the policy is a de facto right to buy or sell land.3 Whether or not large numbers of farmers will transact their land use rights remains to be seen and depends on whether the Central Committee’s objectives with the reforms are realized. Some economists believe that the policy reform allowing Chinese farmers to buy and sell LURs would lead to more efficient land use and allow much larger farms to be established. Part of this optimism likely arises from the growth observed in agricultural output and grain output immediately following the 1978 reforms through 1984 and the disappointing growth thereafter (see Brandt et al., 2002). If a market for trading farm LURs developed, farmers could gain a new source of cash income that could help alleviate the poverty in rural areas. This would also create more asset wealth for farmers and strengthen land security, which would in turn provide access to credit markets and encourage farmers to invest in farming and increase productivity. This appears to be the case for at least some farmers. In Nanzheng County, Shaanxi, annual rents have increased by 40% since policy reform ranging from 700 RMB/mu to 1200 RMB/mu. One farmer reported receiving 3000 Yuan in land transfers and this allowed him to work for employment wages of 900 RMB/month generating revenues of 13,000 RMB for the year (Shaanxi Daily 19/10/2011). In the Yangling district, in which our survey took place, the Ministry of Construction Management is piloting the non-profit Yangling Land Bank to serve as a mechanism for the smooth transition of land transfers across 10 administration villages. The Bank negotiates with individual farm households to create an inventory of land, and then matches this inventory to other farmers seeking to expand; agricultural enterprises looking to modernize; or other commercial interests. However, comprehending land markets, which in our context includes land use rights, requires a complex, not mutually exclusive, understanding of market transparency, credit markets, farm size-productivity relationships, agency conflicts, market risks, covariate risks, contingent markets, rent seeking, government intrusion and market distortions (Binswanger et al., 1993), many of which are absent in rural China. The issue at hand is in understanding how, in the presence of these complexities, a market for transactions in land use rights will evolve in rural China, who would be buyers, who would be sellers, and at what price? The purpose of this paper is to investigate the structure of a LUR market should LUR contracts become widely transactable. The main objectives are to (1) examine the economics of transaction in LURs; (2) evaluate farmer’s intentions to buy and sell LURs and how much they are willing to pay and receive for LURs and; (3) examine factors associated with potential buyer and seller of LURs. Our investigation is based on a household survey of 730 farm households in Shaanxi. Because no formal market exists to transact land use rights, we employ a Multiple Bounded Discrete Choice (MBDC) approach and use contingent valuation (CV) techniques to extract measures of willingness to sell (WTS) and willingness to buy (WTB) land use rights. We show that there is a great disparity between the minimum price at which a farmer will sell and that at which a buyer is willing to buy. The disequilibrium is so significant that we doubt that an equilibrium matching buyers and sellers would obtain any time soon. This paper is the first to provide a preliminary assessment of farmers’ willingness to buy and willingness to sell LURs.

Modern economics suggest that tenure security and land ownership would encourage agricultural investment and enhance rural economic growth. In the past few decades, Chinese farmers have failed to capitalize on the economic gains because rural land reform has not kept pace with urban land reform. China allows urban residents to trade or sell their land use contracts freely. That right has allowed people to profit from city property in ways that farmers have not legally been able to do. However, in 2008, The Chinese government has considered the policy and possibility of LURs transfer and transactability as farmers are allowed to buy and sell LURs for the first time. This could draw hundreds of millions of farmers more firmly into the market economy. Therefore, it is interesting to see what would happen if the Chinese government made it legal for farmers to buy or sell LURs. The results from the study suggest that, at the LURs market equilibrium, the estimated equilibrium price of LURs is 39156.1335 RMB and the equilibrium percentage of farmers who will participate in the market is 16.43%. This is in fact a significant portion of the population participating in the market which numbers over 131 million farmers representing 800 million farmers employed in an agricultural sector in China. In contrast, the liberalization of LURs in Vietnam in the early 1990s resulted in only about 3% of LURs being transacted. The price elasticity of demand is equal to −0.952 and the price elasticity of supply is 0.8623. The inelasticity of demand and supply would imply changes in LURs value have a relatively small effect on the changes in percentage of farmers willing to buy and sell LURs. We apply the contingent valuation method to estimate the value of LURs by incorporating several determinants of land value. The expected maximum WTB and minimum WTS from self-declare questions are 23551.34 RMB and 68642.95 RMB respectively. With the existence of LURs market, the expected value of LURs would probably be in between the value of 23551.34 RMB and 68642.95 RMB. However, the expected maximum WTB and minimum WTS from MBDC format are found to be 58881.91 RMB and 96871.68 RMB respectively. We apply OLS regression using data from self-declare questions but apply Tobit regression using data from MBDC questions. The main issue is “which type of questions and model specification is better?” The self-declare question might be better in the sense that we can directly obtain the true value of willingness to buy and sell of LURs. The estimated market equilibrium LURs value derived from the power function is also in the range of WTB and WTS values estimated from OLS regression. In contrast, the expected value of LURs estimated from Tobit model of MBDC is much higher. Because of the uniqueness of our multiple bounded questions, we apply a Tobit model with censored data at the upper bound (300,000 RMB) and lower bound (20,000 RMB) in the MBDC questions format. However, the MBDC format is better than self-declare questions in term of the flexibility in revealing WTB and WTS. Some respondents might be unwilling to precisely reveal their WTB and WTS value, so the MBDC questions format is another option in that a respondent can answer in qualitative responses from “definitely buy” to “definitely sell” at a given value. In addition, the MBDC questions format also give the important information about the elasticity of demand and supply of LURs. We do not believe that land per mu, about 1/6th of an acre, will transact at anywhere near, let alone above 39,000 RMB. What the results actually indicate is that the spread between the price at which potential sellers will sell or potential buyers will buy are nowhere close. The suggested equilibrium is where the numbers of buyers equals the number of sellers, but this is not to say that this is the current equilibrium or whether such an equilibrium will actually arise in the near future. In fact the results suggest the opposite; that in the near term there are not enough buyers to satisfy the price at which buyers would sell. The OLS results from self-declare questions indicate that tomato farmers, risk rationed and quantity rationed individuals, farmers who have computer at home, have family members work for village committee and farmers live near the city are more likely to place high maximum WTB value of LURs which cause the increase in value of LURs in the market. Moreover, several factors have significant impact on the minimum WTS. Household income, percentage of income from farming and asset value are positively related to WTS of LURs. Farmers who can generate high income from farming would sell LURs at a high price because their marginal productivity of land is relatively high. In addition, farmers who have ever stated business have high minimum WTS and would be more likely to remain the agriculture. However, farmers who can access to a formal credit or who reside near the city have a low minimum WTS. Farmers whose land located near the city want to sell LURs because they have more opportunity to work in the city. The Tobit model results using data from MBDC questions suggest that corn, wheat farmers, having computer at home and good business climate have reverse effect on maximum WTB and would decrease value of LURs. However, farmers having more saving, having internet access at home or having family members working for state enterprise place relatively greater maximum WTB value of LURs. The minimum WTS for LURs depends on several factors. Female respondents and farmers having internet access place relatively greater maximum WTB value of LURs. In contrast, percentage of income from farming and saving are found to be negatively correlated with WTS. In addition, having family members work as a village leader or work in a county government would cause a decrease in minimum WTS. Factors associated with potential buyers and sellers are also examined in the last section. The results show that tomato farmers are less likely to be sellers of LURs because growing tomato can make high profit to them. Furthermore, farmers who can access a formal credit and who live near the city are less likely to be sellers of LURs. On the contrary, the greater assets farmers hold would increase the probability of selling LURs. The probability of buying and selling LURs also varies between village regions. The study shows preliminary representation of the LURs market structure if the transaction of LURs is implemented. Clearly, several factors significantly affect WTB and WTS. The characteristics of potential buyers and sellers differ depending on the production, income, geographical location, etc. The results have important policy implications. If the goal is to enhance rural development through the LURs market which would benefit both the agricultural sector and farmer wealth, then the government should encourage farmers to buy LURs, increase farm invest and expand the production. Results also suggest that farmers who grow high profit crops are more likely to buy LURs and stay in farm. In addition, risk rationed and quantity rationed individuals are more likely to buy LURs at high price. Farmland has served as collateral for farm mortgages, reducing the effect of capital costs for both expansion and operating credit. Therefore, it is important to enhance the certainty and security of LURs contract. Also, the consideration whether land contracts should be extended to 70 years from 30 years should be seriously addressed as it would give farmers more security and presumably increase the value of their LURs. In general, farmland is crucial to the economic stability in the agricultural sector as it is a significant factor of production and a traditional source of wealth to farmers. Farmland values have served as a combination of both a retirement portfolio and an estate for bequest to future generations of farmers.