Does the policy of rural land rights confirmation promote the transfer of farmland in China?

Land tenure security and land transfer markets are once again a topmost priority in the policy development agenda because of their expected outcomes in terms of equity and efficiency in the rural sector of China. The policy of rural land rights confirmation has been implemented since 2010 to enhance land tenure security and the transferability of farmland. However, only a few studies have been conducted on the effect of rural land rights confirmation on farmland transfer. Therefore, we use household-level survey data from 48 villages across Tianjin City and Shandong Province to explore whether rural land rights confirmation promotes the transfer of farmlands. Our empirical results show that rural land rights confirmation has significant and positive effects on the likelihood and amount of transfer-out land at the 5% significance level, but the effect on transfer-in farmland is insignificant. The results of the study have several policy implications. For instance, the agricultural comparative advantage should be improved through various agricultural subsidy policies. Moreover, the intermediary service network for farmland transfer should be established, and strengthening the non-farm employment skills and improving the non-agricultural employment market are necessary for the rural labour force

Ekonomski rast i emisija ugljika u Kini: Kuznetsova krivulja prostorne ekonometrije

Economic development has largely contributed to the increment of CO2 emission. This study uses spatial econometric models to investigate the relationship between economic growth and carbon emission in China with data of 30 provinces of China during the period of 2000 to 2012. Results show that the relationship between carbon emission and economic growth in China during the recent decade has the development tendency toward an inverse U-shaped curve, approximately confirming the carbon emission’s Kuznets curve hypothesis in China. There exists a significant spatial correlation between carbon emission and economic growth,implying that carbon emission in a province may be influenced by economic growth in adjacent provinces. When economic growth reaches 279.91 million Yuan/km2 GDP (at a comparable price in 2000), the contradiction between economic growth and carbon emission begins to be gradually alleviated. These findings provide new insights and valuable information for reducing carbon emissions in China.Gospodarski razvoj uvelike je pridonio povećanju emisije CO2. Ova studija koristi prostorne ekonometrijske modele za istraživanje odnosa između gospodarskog rasta i emisije ugljika u Kini s podacima iz 30 pokrajina Kine u razdoblju od 2000. do 2012. godine. Rezultati pokazuju da tijekom posljednjeg desetljeća odnos emisije ugljika i gospodarskog rasta u Kini ima tendenciju razvoja prema inverznoj krivulji U-oblika, približno potvrđujući hipotezu Kuznetsove krivulje emisije ugljika u Kini. Postoji značajna prostorna povezanost između emisije ugljika i ekonomskog rasta, što implicira da na emisiju ugljika u pokrajini može utjecati gospodarski rast u susjednim pokrajinama. Nakon što je ekonomski rast dosegnuo omjer od 279,91 milijuna Yuan/km2 BDP-a (usporediva cijena u 2000. godini), kontradikcija između gospodarskog rasta i emisije ugljika počinje se postupno ublažavati. Ovi rezultati pružaju nove uvide i vrijedne informacije kako reducirati emisije ugljika u Kini

Policy implications and impact of household registration system on Peasants’ Willingness to return rural residential lands: Evidence from household survey in rural China

Despite a growing body of literature on China’s household registration system and rural land transfer, few studies have examined the impact of the household registration system on peasants’ willingness to return rural residential land. This paper aims to fill this gap and uses household survey data to measure the impacts of household registration system on peasants’ willingness to return rural residential land. The results show that the household registration system reduced the farmers’ enthusiasm to exit the rural residential land, that is, household registration system had a significant negative impact on farmers’ willingness to return rural residential land

Does Rural Construction Land Marketization Inhibit State-Owned Industrial Land Transactions? Evidence from Huzhou City, China

The market-based allocation of rural construction land is conducive to the revitalization of rural land resources, influences urban and rural land planning, and facilitates urbanization. The rural collective operating construction land entering the market (COCLEM) is a key measure for China’s rural construction land marketization reform, while its impacts on the existing land supply pattern have received little attention. Taking Huzhou City as an example, this paper investigates the impacts of COCLEM on state-owned industrial land (SIL) transactions with Difference-in-Differences (DID) regression models. The results show the following: (1) Given the natural conditions, enterprises’ preferences, and government forces, COCLEM has failed to inhibit the SIL transaction scale. (2) COCLEM contributes to industrial agglomeration and significantly increases the value of SIL. These findings altogether imply that currently, in China, market-based rural construction land transfer is the complement of land administrative allocation. Policy implications are drawn from this analysis to advance further reforms for China’s urban–rural integrated construction land market

Examination of the Relationships between Urban Form and Urban Public Services Expenditure in China

This econometric study contributes to the ongoing debate about the costs and benefits of urban form by employing interdisciplinary means—urban planning, econometrics and public administration—to explore the relationship between urban form and urban public services expenditure. In China, particularly, rapid urbanization is accompanied by an increase of urban public services expenditure and a difference in efficiency, which undermines the promotion of urban public service development. The Chinese government has paid great attention to urban sustainable development and promoting urban public services performance; however, until recently there has been a lack of empirical studies exploring the relationship between urban public services expenditure and urban form. Thus, the present research aims to analyze this issue by using relevant indicators based on an econometric model. The results provide a promising basis for improving urban public services expenditure efficiency. Based on the urban area interpreted by remote sensing data and geographic information system, two urban form metrics, the compactness ratio and the elongation ratio, are selected and quantified to describe urban compactness and urban sprawl accurately. Panel data analyses are performed using a cross-sectional dataset of the 30 cities for the years 2007, 2010 and 2013 to assess the likelihood of association between indicators of urban form and urban public services expenditure, while controlling for other determinants, such as educational level, income per capita, degree of industrialization, and unemployment rate. The results indicate that urban elongation is positively correlated to per capita urban public services expenditure and urban compactness is insignificantly correlated to it. Thus, it is recommended that policymakers consider the relationship between urban form and public services expenditure as part of urban planning and on-going strategies to promote public service efficiency

Analyzing the Effects of Spatial Interaction among City Clusters on Urban Growth—Case of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration

For the past two decades, China’s urbanization has attracted increasing attention from scholars around the world. Numerous insightful studies have attempted to determine the socioeconomic causes of the rapid urban growth in Chinese cities. However, most of these studies regarded each city as a single entity, with few considering inter-city relationships. The present study uses a gravity-based model to measure the spatial interaction among city clusters in the Wuhan urban agglomeration (WUA), which is one of China’s most rapidly urbanizing regions. The effects of spatial interaction on urban growth area were also analyzed. Empirical results indicate that, similar to urban population or employment in secondary and tertiary industries in the WUA from 2000 to 2005, the spatial interaction among city clusters is one of the main drivers of urban growth. In fact, this study finds the effects of spatial interaction as the only socioeconomic factor that affected the spatial expansion from 2005 to 2010. This finding suggests that population migration and information and commodity flows showed greater influence than the socioeconomic drivers of each city did on promoting urbanization in the WUA during this period. We thus argue that spatial interaction among city clusters should be a consideration in future regional planning