Resource information
As part of a national experiment, in
2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property
rights reforms, including complete registration of all land
together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate
labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity
design with spatial fixed effects to compare 529 villages
just inside and outside the prefecture’s border. The results
suggest that the reforms increased tenure security, aligned
land use closer to economic incentives, mainly through
market transfers, and led to an increase in enterprise
start-ups. These impacts, most of which are more pronounced
for villages with lower travel time to Chengdu city, point
toward high potential gains from factor market reform.
