Essays on China's Rural Land Rental Market: Institutions and Contract Design
| dc.contributor.advisor | Leonard, Kenneth | en_US |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Murrell, Peter | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Yang, Ziyan | en_US |
| dc.contributor.department | Agricultural and Resource Economics | en_US |
| dc.contributor.publisher | Digital Repository at the University of Maryland | en_US |
| dc.contributor.publisher | University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-06-22T06:10:27Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-06-22T06:10:27Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2017 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | China's rural land rental market, a gradually maturing market, is now revolutionizing agriculture in China by facilitating the upgrading of smallholder production to factory farming. I study a mature rural land rental market using survey data I collected in 2014, concentrating on institutions of the market and rental contract design. Chapter 1 focuses on the relationship between the rural land rental market and China's institutions for rural land and agricultural production in the past 30 years. Chapter 2 is devoted to survey design and data collection, introducing a new survey method that remedies deficiency of existing data and important variables that capture recent developments of the market. Chapter 3 describes the survey data from three perspectives to emphasize recent developments of the market, which includes heterogeneity in transactions (large-scale vs. small-scale) and market structure (modern vs. traditional) and changes in the role the village administration played in the market. Chapters 4 and 5, with different research focuses, analyze rental contracts as ex-ante responses to ex-post contract violation associated with the primary uncertainty in the market. Chapter 4 focuses on a hold-up transaction cost associated with the bargaining over contractual formality, which is caused by rental partners’ asymmetric preferences over contractual formality. I find that traditional rental transactions that occur only because of social proximity and the involvement of village administration are gradually being eliminated due to high transaction cost. Instead, the renting-in entrepreneurs from outside of the village are encouraged. In addition, I find that the renting-in agents usually lead the bargaining. Chapter 5 concentrates on the bargaining over two important contractual terms: contractual flexibility and rental payment. My theory shows which equations should be estimated in an empirical test of the bargaining process. I draw two empirical conclusions. First, local entrepreneurs, as the renting-in agents, decrease contractual flexibility and increase rental payment, which promotes agricultural and village development. Second, the rental payment offered to the renting-out agents with long-term non-agricultural employment is higher than that offered to the renting-out agents with short-term or temporary employment, suggesting a potential increase in income inequality within the village. | en_US |
| dc.identifier | https://doi.org/10.13016/M2GZ8P | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1903/19426 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject.pqcontrolled | Agriculture economics | en_US |
| dc.subject.pqcontrolled | Economics | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Chinese Economy | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Contract | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Land Rentals | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Nash Bargaining | en_US |
| dc.title | Essays on China's Rural Land Rental Market: Institutions and Contract Design | en_US |
| dc.type | Dissertation | en_US |
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