Abstract
This chapter investigates the institutional and political motivation behind Chinese local governments’ land conveyance behavior. The principal-agent model is adopted to illustrate the mechanisms of how yardstick competition and fiscal decentralization encourage land sale. We find that although yardstick competition promotes short-term economic growth, the presence of land finance impairs the “selection effect” of yardstick competition. Using a panel data of 31 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2011 in a spatial autoregressive model, we show that yardstick competition exerts a large positive impact on the intensity of land sale and leasing, while the influence of fiscal decentralization has a moderate impact and the influence of foreign direct investment (FDI) appears to be insignificant.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The State of China's State Capitalism |
| Subtitle of host publication | Evidence of Its Successes and Pitfalls |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 3-30 |
| Number of pages | 28 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9789811309830 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9789811309823 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2018 |