The Impact of Land Market Structure on Farmland Conversion and Social Welfare Change: a Chinese case

摘要

Giving atheoretical analysis on current Chma’s land market structure．The paper proposes the hypotheses that current hybrid governance structure combined with hierarchy and market causes an over conversion offarmland from the rural to the urban sector and a welfare reallocation discriminating farmland owners．In order to Validate the hypotheses a multi．Markets equilibrium model is built up to simulate the demand and supply curves in difierent land submarkets of China．The model is applied to an empirical study in an unspecified city Y in the Jiangxi Province of China．The results show that the current hybrid govemance structure in China caused an over conversion of the farmland in Y city and its acreage is 183．5ha from 1999 to 2003．Which was 33．7％ of the total．][11e farmland owners’welfare decreased．And 27．63％and 7．65％of the loss were tranSferred to the secondary industrial sectors and the government respectively．The remaining 64．72％became the net 10SS of social welfare．The paper coneludes with some remarks on the CUlTent land market structure and policy recommendations for the future．