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

本项目从理论上说明和实证检验了产权制度对家庭劳动力分配决策和其他市场结果的因果效应。该项目特别关注农村中国，那里的土地是集体所有的，在家庭责任制下经常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次优配置到非农就业，阻碍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负面影响。为了确定这些影响，该项目依赖于2002年中国的一项法律改革带来的自然实验，该法律禁止村干部在农民30年的土地使用期内进行一切土地调整。通过利用改革前土地使用权保障的跨村差异，该项目试图在一个既有时间效应又有村庄固定效应的模型中分离产权改革的因果效应，并调查村庄在潜在效率损失的情况下进行周期性土地再分配的动机。关于频繁的土地重新分配的潜在好处，该项目的理论框架产生了三个替代假设：替代功能失调的土地和劳动力市场、收入再分配和社会保险。该项目将通过将村子、居民或政府官员的特征与村子改革前的具体土地重新分配政策联系起来，在这些假设之间进行测试。基于这些结果，该项目将使用上一段中描述的相同方法来进一步检验土地重新分配对其他社会经济结果的影响，例如对收入波动或家庭之间的不平等的影响。最后但并非最不重要的是，该项目研究了中国农村的集体制度决策过程。在审查村庄关于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，是否考虑了土地保有权不安全的长期影响，或者他们的决定绝大多数是由个人的短期利益主导的？其次，如果每个家庭都是完全理性的，他们是否倾向于做出对群体最优的集体理性决策？这个项目从几个方面推进了我们对发展经济学的理解：首先，它是首批确定产权对家庭劳动决策的因果影响的项目之一，尤其是在农村背景下。该项目展示了产权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与效率无关的产权改革结果的项目。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，该项目允许对各种产权制度进行更全面的评估，并揭示了为什么基于社区的土地所有权在许多发展中国家仍然如此普遍，尽管其效率成本很高。此外，对村民在土地重新分配政策中的集体选择的审查也补充了以前对集体理性的研究，特别是在制度设计和选择的背景下。这为政策制定者设计未来的产权改革提供了信息和见解。最后，该项目的发现还特别有助于关于中国巨大的农村劳动力剩余是否已经达到极限的辩论。过去30年，农村劳动力形成了中国的比较优势，并刺激了中国的快速增长。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增加劳动力流动，释放劳动力潜力。这些发现不可避免地对中国和她的贸易伙伴的经济地位和发展战略产生了重要影响。然而，该项目也提醒政策制定者注意此类改革的潜在成本，并建议在进行房地产改革之前，为农村人口发展替代的社会保障网络。

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.