Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Effects of Property Rights on Labor Allocation

经济学博士论文研究：产权对劳动力配置的影响

• 批准号: 1326986
• 负责人: Mark Rosenzweig
• 金额: $ 6.3万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-15 至 2014-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1326986&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Effects

This project theoretically illustrates and empirically tests the causal effects of property rights institutions on households' labor allocation decisions and other market outcomes. In particular, the project focuses on rural China, where land is collectively owned and frequently reallocated among households under the Household Responsibility system. The project argues that the tenure insecurity arising from such a land-holding system may have led households to sub-optimally allocate labor to off-farm employment, discouraged the development of the land leasing market and the agricultural labor market, and negatively affected rural labor's income and productivity. In order to identify these effects, the project relies on a natural experiment brought about by a legal change in China in 2002, which prohibits all land readjustments by village officials throughout farmers' 30-year term of land usage. By exploiting the cross-village variation in pre-reform land tenure security, the project attempts to isolate the causal effects of the property rights reform in a model with both time and village fixed-effects.In addition, the project investigates the motivations for villages to conduct periodic land reallocations despite the potential efficiency loss. Three alternative hypotheses on the potential benefits of frequent land reallocations are generated from the project's theoretical framework: substitution for dysfunctional land and labor markets, income redistribution, and social insurance. The project will test between these hypotheses by relating the characteristics of the village, its residents, or its government officials with the village's specific pre-reform land reallocation policies. Based on these results, the project will use the same method described in the previous paragraph to further examine the effects of the land reallocations on other socioeconomic outcomes, such as on income volatility or inequality across households.Last but not least, the project studies the collective institutional decision-making process in Chinese villages. In examining villages' decision over when to reallocate land, the project attempts to answer two questions. First, do individual households take the long-term effects of tenure insecurity into consideration when they decide on when to reallocate land, or are their decisions overwhelmingly dominated by personal short-term interest? Second, if each household is fully rational, do they tend to reach collectively rational decisions that are optimal for the group?This project advances our understanding of development economics in several ways: First, it is one of the first that identifies the causal effects of property rights on households' labor decisions, especially in a rural context. Showing the effects of property reforms on households' participation in land-leasing and labor markets, the project also improves understanding on the market formation process of developing countries. Second, it is the first project that attempts to seriously evaluate the non-efficiency-related outcomes of property reforms. By illustrating and identifying the potential redistribution and social insurance values of collective ownership, the project allows more comprehensive evaluations of various property rights institutions, and also sheds light on why community-based ownership of land, despite its efficiency costs, is still so prevalent among many developing countries.In addition, the examination of villagers' collective choice in land reallocation policies also supplements previous studies of group rationality, especially in the context of institutional design and choice. This provides information and insights to policy makers on the design of future property rights reforms.Finally, the findings of the project also contribute specifically to the debate on whether China's huge rural labor surplus, which has shaped the country's comparative advantage in trade and spurred its rapid growth over the past 30 years, has reached a limit. By providing evidence that excessive labor could still be trapped inefficiently in the agricultural sector due to land tenure insecurity, the project suggests that China can further increase labor mobility and unleash its labor potential through property rights reforms. Such findings inevitably have important implications for the economic standings and the development strategies of both China and her trade partners. However, the project also cautions policy-makers about the potential costs of such reforms, and suggests that property reforms be preceded by the development of alternative social safety networks for the rural population.

本项目从理论上阐述并实证检验产权制度对家庭劳动力配置决策和其他市场结果的因果影响。特别是，该项目侧重于中国农村，那里的土地是集体所有，并经常在家庭责任制下在家庭之间重新分配。该项目认为，这种土地持有制度产生的保有权不安全可能导致家庭将劳动力分配到非农就业，阻碍了土地租赁市场和农业劳动力市场的发展，并对农村劳动力的收入和生产率产生了负面影响。为了确定这些影响，该项目依赖于2002年中国法律的变化所带来的自然实验，该法律禁止村干部在农民30年的土地使用期内重新调整土地。本项目利用改革前农村土地保障的跨村差异，在一个包含时间和村庄固定效应的模型中，分离出产权改革的因果效应，并考察村庄在潜在效率损失的情况下进行定期土地再分配的动机。从该项目的理论框架中产生了三个关于频繁土地重新分配的潜在利益的替代假设：功能失调的土地和劳动力市场的替代，收入再分配和社会保险。该项目将通过将村庄、村民或政府官员的特征与村庄改革前的具体土地重新分配政策联系起来，对这些假设进行检验。在此基础上，本项目将采用与前文所述相同的方法，进一步考察土地再分配对其他社会经济结果的影响，如对收入波动或家庭间不平等的影响。最后，本项目将研究中国农村集体制度决策过程。在研究村庄对何时重新分配土地的决定时，该项目试图回答两个问题。首先，个别家庭在决定何时重新分配土地时，是否考虑到保有权无保障的长期影响，或者他们的决定是否完全受个人短期利益的支配？第二，如果每个家庭都是完全理性的，他们是否倾向于达成对群体最优的集体理性决策？该项目在几个方面推进了我们对发展经济学的理解：首先，它是第一个确定财产权对家庭劳动决策的因果影响的项目之一，特别是在农村背景下。该项目展示了财产改革对家庭参与土地租赁和劳动力市场的影响，还增进了对发展中国家市场形成过程的了解。其次，这是第一个试图认真评估产权改革的非效率相关结果的项目。通过说明和确定集体所有权的潜在再分配和社会保险价值，该项目可以对各种产权机构进行更全面的评估，并揭示为什么基于社区的土地所有权尽管有效率成本，但在许多发展中国家仍然如此普遍。对村民集体选择的考察也是对以往集体理性研究的补充，特别是在制度设计和选择的背景下。最后，本课题的研究结果还有助于探讨，在过去30年里，中国的贸易比较优势和经济高速增长的动力是农村劳动力过剩，但这种过剩是否已经到了极限？通过提供证据表明，由于土地保有权的不安全，过多的劳动力仍然可能被低效地困在农业部门，该项目表明，中国可以通过产权改革进一步提高劳动力流动性，释放其劳动力潜力。这一发现对中国及其贸易伙伴的经济地位和发展战略都具有重要意义。然而，该项目也提醒决策者注意这种改革的潜在成本，并建议在进行财产改革之前，为农村人口建立替代性社会安全网络。