Evolution of Land Rental Markets during Thirty Years of Reform in Rural China: Evidence from Household-level Data

The policies of rural land transfer have undergone significantly changes since the reform initiated in rural China in the late 1970s. However, little information is available in the literature on actual implementation of these policies. The overall goal of this paper is to provide empirical evidences of the gaps between the policies and their implementations and their implications for future policy reform. Based on a unique data from a national representative household survey, while we found that households have had the basic rights to rent their land, we also found great development of the rental land markets have been made. We conclude that the development of rural land markets should be promoted by further reform of land institution in the future.