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Land Security and Mobility Frictions

Author

Listed:
  • Tasso Adamopoulos
  • Loren Brandt
  • Chaoran Chen
  • Diego Restuccia
  • Xiaoyun Wei
Abstract
Frictions that impede the mobility of workers across occupations and space are a prominent feature of developing countries. We disentangle the role of insecure property rights from other labor mobility frictions for the reallocation of labor from agriculture to non-agriculture and from rural to urban areas. We combine rich household and individual-level panel data from China and an equilibrium quantitative framework featuring sorting of workers across locations and occupations. We explicitly model the farming household and the endogenous decisions of who operates the family farm and who potentially migrates, capturing an additional channel of selection within the household. We find that land insecurity has substantial negative effects on agricultural productivity and structural change, raising the share of rural households operating farms by over 40 percentage points and depressing agricultural productivity by more than 20 percent. Comparatively, these quantitative effects are as large as those from all residual labor-mobility frictions. We measure a sharp reduction in overall labor mobility barriers over 2004-2018 in the Chinese economy, all accounted for by improved land security, consistent with reforms covering rural land in China during the period.

Suggested Citation

  • Tasso Adamopoulos & Loren Brandt & Chaoran Chen & Diego Restuccia & Xiaoyun Wei, 2022. "Land Security and Mobility Frictions," NBER Working Papers 29666, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29666
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    3. Huoqing Cao & Chaoran Chen & Xican Xi & Sharon Xuejing Zuo, 2024. "Family migration and structural transformation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(3), pages 753-776, August.
    4. Cao, Huoqing & Chen, Shiyi & Xi, Xican, 2023. "Aging, migration, and structural transformation in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    5. Benjian Wu & Yiyuan Rong & Xinyu Liang & Haibo Zhu & Xue Shi, 2024. "Can Land Transfer Alleviate Multidimensional Relative Poverty in Rural Areas?," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-24, October.
    6. Zhang, Li & Xie, Lunyu & Zheng, Xinye, 2023. "Across a few prohibitive miles: The impact of the Anti-Poverty Relocation Program in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    7. Tasso Adamopoulos & Diego Restuccia, 2024. "Symposium on Misallocation and Structural Transformation: Introduction," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(3), pages 667-673, August.
    8. Cao, Huoqing & Chen, Chaoran & Xi, Xican, 2024. "Home Production and Gender Gap in Structural Change," MPRA Paper 122334, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
    • Q1 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture

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