Impact of land registration and certification on land rental by Chinese farmers

Abstract This paper reports on an empirical investigation of the impact of the Rural Land Registration and Certification Program (RLRC) on land rental among farmers in China. Propensity Score Matching and an IV-Tobit estimation are used in the estimate to overcome endogeneity problems caused by sample selection bias and reverse causality. The China Labor-force Dynamics Survey provides the data. Results show that the RLRC is associated with an increase in the rental scale of cultivated land (especially dryland) but has no significant impact on scale of irrigated land among farmers. Policy recommendations include consideration of village- and farm-specific factors that have been shown to affect adoption including village-support and level of natural endowment for agricultural land.