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Off-farm employment, land renting and concentration of farmland in the process of urbanization: Chinese evidence

Weiliang Su (School of Economics, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, China)
Tor Eriksson (Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark)
Linxiu Zhang (Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China)

China Agricultural Economic Review

ISSN: 1756-137X

Article publication date: 8 May 2018

420

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of off-farm employment on the concentration of farmland via households’ land rental activities in rural China.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses Probit and Tobit models to estimate the effect of off-farm employment on land rental activities. Furthermore, the paper compares the degree of land concentration between pre-renting and post-renting in terms of Gini coefficients of farmland ownership at village level.

Findings

The authors find that off-farm employment has a positive effect on the renting out farmland, and insignificant effect on renting in farmland. Moreover, off-farm employment intensifies the concentration of farmland from small farms toward big farms by renting activities.

Originality/value

The authors believe that the results will contribute positively to the assessment of the effect of off-farm employment on land concentration in the context of the urbanization process in China.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial assistance of the Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71333012).

Citation

Su, W., Eriksson, T. and Zhang, L. (2018), "Off-farm employment, land renting and concentration of farmland in the process of urbanization: Chinese evidence", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 338-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-10-2016-0169

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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