Off-farm employments and land rental behavior: evidence from rural China
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of off-farm labor employments on household land rental behavior in rural China.
Design/methodology/approach
IV-Probit and IV-Tobit model are used to identify the estimate of interest.
Findings
The results indicate that households with more members participating in either migration or local off-farm work are more/less likely to rent out/in land. Moreover, the effect of migration on household land rental behavior is much larger than the effect of local off-farm work.
Practical implications
These results suggest that ensuring benefits of migrants in urban cities can automatically promote household land rental behavior in rural China.
Originality/value
The authors provide a rigorous and careful empirical analysis on the effect of off-farm employment on household land rental behavior and pay special attention to the endogeneity issue tackled using separable instruments.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
JEL Classification — Q13, P23
The author thanks the editor, Xian Xin, an anonymous associate editor, and two anonymous referees for comments which substantially improved the paper. The author also thanks Ying Bai, James Kai-sing Kung, Chicheng Ma, Huadong Song, Edward Jow-ching Tu, Satoru Shimokawa, and participants of the seminar at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for their helpful comments. The author alone is responsible for any remaining errors. Yi Che gratefully acknowledges financial support from Grant of Liberal Arts Research and Innovation in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (13QN18).
Citation
Che, Y. (2016), "Off-farm employments and land rental behavior: evidence from rural China", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 37-54. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-09-2014-0086
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited