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The Structure Of Farmland Property Rights And Agricultural Performance

Posted on:2006-02-25Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z G ChenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360152493829Subject:Land Resource Management
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Since the middle and the end of 1990s', the appearances of 'grain issue' and 'issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers' have caught many persons' eyes, when China is entering the period of rapid socioeconomic development and enjoying the fruit of reforms. As everyone knows, all those issues on reforms and developments result from the institutions. At present, the importance of China's land tenure system have gradually recognized not only by scholars, but also administrative organizations, especially farmland property rights system on 'grain issues' and 'issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers'. Its characteristics and changes will become the key factors affecting the sustainable development of China's society and economy.So far, many studies on China's farmland property rights system have been conducted. In those studies, most of them focused on the efficiency analysis of the farmland property rights system. It is undeniable that the increase of economic efficiency, especially the improvement of agricultural performances, comes from the improvement of farmland property rights system to a great extent. The researches studied not only the effects of China's farmland property rights system on agricultural performances as a whole, but also the impacts of farmland's use rights, transfer rights and profit rights on agricultural performance, respectively. Even so, it is necessary to indicate that property rights are a complex right system essentially. Studies on the performances of property rights system should not be confined to one special aspect, but have to be expanded from its internal structure characteristics. The aims of this thesis are to define the structure of farmland property rights system from some subdivisions first, such as the arrangement of farmland property rights on different main bodies and the composition of different rights of farmland property rights. Then, focus on the effects of farmland property rights system and its changes on agricultural performance, from the macro and micro angle, giving attention togovernment and market.According to the facts that the arrangements of farmland property rights on different main bodies reflect the allocation of farmland, and the structure of farmland rights determines the influencing ranges and degrees of property rights on performance, this thesis firstly builds an analytical framework about effects of structure of farmland property rights on agricultural performance, based on the analysis of the relationship between property rights and performance. It is necessary for the choice of analytical angle, scope and logical structure of next positive studies.Then, in the thesis, reviewed the course of farmland property rights system changes since P. R. China founded from the angle of structure changes. As a whole, the changes of China's farmland property rights system mainly focused on the alternation between ownership and use rights: in the initial stage of P. R. China founded, farmers were the owner of farmland and they cultivated them individually; then, farmland were cultivated under the cooperation of all farmers, although they are still individual property, during the period of productive cooperation: in the stage of people's community, the farmland became the collective property, and was still cultivated under the cooperation of farmers; after reform and opening, government returned the use rights to the farmers, based on the improvement of farmer collective ownership. All above reflects a cycle of structure changes of farmland property rights to some extent. As for the structure of ownership, the farmland has almost become privately owned property after farmers get more independent rights. Farmers obtained the use rights of farmland again after a series of reforms. It is undeniable that the above structure changes of farmland property rights result from the interaction between property rights and agricultural performance. Especially since reform and opening, each change has resulted in the improvement of agricultural performance to some extent.In order to explore the mechanism of institutional changes and agricultural performance, this thesis examines the impact of ownership structure, land tenure structure and the composing of internal rights on agricultural performances, based on the above analytical framework, and puts forward some research hypotheses, including: (1) Farmland use performance under collective property is better than that under state-owned property in China during socioeconomic transition. (2) The difference among farmers, the main body ofland tenure, and the whole collocating diversity of land tenure have significant effects on agricultural performance. (3) The improvement of three rights, composing the whole farmland property rights, such as use rights, transfer rights and profit rights, has positive impacts on farmland use performance. Furthermore, the effects are different between developed and less-developed areas. Therefore, three econometric models based on a classical Cobb-Douglas production function are applied by adding some variables reflecting the structure of farmland property rights to test the above hypotheses using the data collected from statistical yearbooks and rural surveys in some areas of Jiangsu and Jiangxi province. Main conclusions are put forward as follows:(1) The analysis of effects of farmland ownership structure on agricultural performance reveals that collective property of farmland is more effective than the others in China during transition, because of the lower marketization level, restriction of high costs from complex principle-agent relationship, and improvement of collective property on endowing exclusive rights, market reform and village administration. This conclusion answers the question of who should be the owner of farmland in China during transition, based on the agricultural performance other than the costs of institutional changes, political stabilization and ideology, etc.(2) Through the analysis of effects of land tenure structure on agricultural performance, the correlation between farmland performance and the difference among villages on households' land tenure allocation is obvious. In detail, over-average allocation on land tenure is not helpful to the improvement of farmland performance. Furthermore, allocating land tenure to the farmers with more experience, higher education and less off-farm work will be useful to increase the productivity of agriculture. This conclusion also answers the question of how to allocate land tenure in the community to improve productivity.(3) Through the analysis of the effects of the internal rights structure and its changes on agricultural performance, it is clear that more secure use rights, free transfer rights and exclusive profit rights, will improve the agricultural performance. Moreover, the above effects are different between developed and less-developed areas. In detail, the effects of transfer rights on farmers' production are most significant in developed areas, and the effects of profit rights on agricultural performance are the largest in less-developed areas.
Keywords/Search Tags:Farmland Property Rights, Structure of Property Rights, Agricultural Performance, Transition, China
PDF Full Text Request
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