Harnessing the Forces of Urban Expansion - The Public Economics of Farmland Development Allowance
ZEF-Discussion Papers on Development Policy No. 147
See all articles by Nancy H. Chau
Nancy H. Chau
Cornell University - School of Applied Economics and Management; IZA Institute of Labor Economics
Weiwen Zhang
Zhejiang University - College of Public Administration; Columbia University - Columbia Earth Institute
For decades, rapid urban expansion has led to concerns over the loss of cultivated land in rural China. This contrasts sharply with another salient feature of the Chinese land policy reform landscape that has gone on largely unnoticed - the addition of newly cultivated land in China through land development has consistently exceeded land conversion. In a model featuring fiscal decentralization, local governments as custodians of land use and development, along with a land development allowance policy instituted in 1998, we show that a land development allowance policy can harness the forces of urban expansion to encourage agricultural land development.
Keywords: land development allowance, fiscal decentralization, inter-jurisdictional competition, agricultural development
JEL Classification: H11, H77, P35, R5, R14, O18
Chau, Nancy H. and Zhang, Weiwen, Harnessing the Forces of Urban Expansion - The Public Economics of Farmland Development Allowance. ZEF-Discussion Papers on Development Policy No. 147. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1749866 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1749866
Nancy H. Chau (Contact Author)
Cornell University - School of Applied Economics and Management ( email )
IZA Institute of Labor Economics
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Zhejiang University - College of Public Administration ( email )
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Columbia University - Columbia Earth Institute ( email )
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