Political Cycle,regional Endowment And Price Scissors Of The Land-supply

With the establishment and improvement of the socialist market economy system,the market mechanism has also become the basic way to optimize the allocation of all economic resources.The land elements also need to be optimally configured and rationally used.The market-oriented reform of the urban land system has greatly improved the efficiency of land use.However,because of the long-term planned economic system rooted in the founding of the country,the government still frequently uses administrative means to intervene in economic development,the present situation of the price of residential land and industrial land has attracted great attention from all walks of life.The central government has repeatedly proposed regulatory measures that are still difficult to reverse this situation.In the long run,it will have a negative impact on the healthy operation of China's land market.This paper draws on the experience of the analysis of promotion incentives for officials.In the championship contest of GDP,local governments urgently need to open up funds under budget constraints,and elements play an irreplaceable role in helping local governments participate in economic competition.Firstly,considering that the pillar role of real estate industry and its related effects in promoting GDP growth,increasing local fiscal revenue and alleviating employment pressure coincides with the demand of local governments,local governments tend to choose " high price and low supply of residential land" and "capitalization of public goods" to cultivate the real estate market.Secondly,in the economies whose growth is mainly driven by investment,it is a rational choice for local governments to depress the price of industrial land in order to gain advantages in attracting foreign investment.To sum up,land price distortion is essentially the product of distorted land transfer behavior of local governments under promotion incentives.Based on the above theoretical analysis and using the National Party Congress cycle to reflect the promotion incentives faced by local officials,this paper empirically examines the mechanism of the political cycle on the scissors difference of land transfer price using panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2016.Empirical analysis shows that the scissors gap of land transfer price has a political periodicity which changes with the convening of National Party congress.Specifically,in the preliminary stage of the last National Party Congress,local governments distort land prices in order to accumulate performance capital.On the eve of the next Party Congress,political uncertainties increase.In order to maintain stability,officials often use the strategy of land price distortion more carefully.Our analysis also shows that the better the regional endowment,the more significant the political cyclical effect of the scissors difference in land transfer price is.On the one hand,the less developed regions are unable to compete with the developed regions for investment,on the other hand,there is little room for using residential land to subsidize industrial land.Even if land resources are allocated by distorting the land transfer price,it is difficult to win the competition among regional local governments.Considering further the regional heterogeneity of the political cyclical efficiency of the scissors difference in land transfer price,the scissors gap of land transfer price in sub-provincial cities shows a new form that the promotion incentives of local government officials have a negative impact on the distortion degree of land transfer price,while the scissors gap of land transfer price in ordinary cities is still very significant,which may be due to the differences in their development strategies,industrial structure and fiscal and tax status.The above land transfer strategy is essentially a rational choice of local governments under a specific institutional structure.Therefore,in order to regulate the behavior of local governments,we must first change the incentive mechanism faced by local government officials.This is the key to the transformation of public service functions by local governments.