Does Farmland Certification Lead to Unintended Policy Impact?Causal Inferences Based on Heterogeneity in Rural Households'Decision Making
Existing empirical studies have different views on the policy effect of farmland certification and its impact on farmers' livelihood decisions and well-being. The general assumption of existing studies is that policy intervention and farmers'responses to policies are random.However,both the pilot area and pilot time of China's farmland certification have non-random policy selectivity,so farmers'response decisions are not random,and the randomness hypothesis of existing studies needs to be re-examined.This paper uses non-parametric matching causal inferences to comprehensively estimate the impact of farmland certification on six types of resource allocation decisions and well-being of farmers,and reveals the reasons for the inconsistent results of existing empirical studies from the supply-side perspective of policy design and implementation and the demand-side perspective of farmers'decision adjustment in the face of policy changes.It is found that in terms of input of agricultural production means,transfer of labor to non-agricultural sectors and access to formal loans,the design of farmland certification policy matches the decision-making of farmers,which helps farmers to carry out specialized division of labor and production accordingly.Although the effect of the policy is marginal,there is no"inconsistency"phenomenon.In terms of land transfer,due to the selection bias of the policy supply side,the negotiation and transaction cost of farmers'land transfer increased by 33.3％,and the time transaction cost increased by 1.45 times.Due to the coping behavior of farmers on the policy demand side, the negotiation and transaction cost of land transfer increased by 3.1 times,and the time transaction cost increased by 27.8％.The two-way deviation between the supply side and the demand side,coupled with the limited"empowerment increment"of the farmland certification,make the policy effects"inconsistent"with the policy expectation.This does not mean that the farmland certification is optional,but shows that people's expectations of the policy effects have certain bias.
farmland certificationresource allocationcausal inferencestransaction cost of institutional changeland transfer
万方数据
