表題番号:2016S-001 日付:2017/04/10
研究課題Impact of Cultivated Land Conversion on Food Security in China
研究者所属(当時) 資格 氏名
(代表者) 政治経済学術院 政治経済学部 准教授 下川 哲
研究成果概要
In China, the steep rise in cultivated land conversion, accompanied by a population increase, has provoked the debate about its impact on food security. Accordingly, the Chinese government emphasizes the importance of retaining cultivated land. However, it is still controversial if cultivated land conversion really threatens China’s food security. Thus, this study investigates the causal impact of cultivated land conversion on grain output in China by employing the instrumental variables estimation. Our estimation strategy exploits the facts that tax reform (a change in the enterprise tax-sharing scheme) and administrative decentralization in 2002 unintentionally influenced farmland conversion and that the magnitude of the unintended influences varied across local governments depending on how much their tax revenues had depended on the enterprise tax before the reform. Using data from 1999 to 2005, we found that land conveyance area significantly increased as local governments’ fiscal revenue decreased, and a decrease in farmland area caused by the land conveyance decreased grain output. Even after controlling for potential endogeneity bias, a 1% decrease in local government’s fiscal revenue increased land conveyance areas by 3.4%, and it decreased grain output by 0.10%. The findings may moderately support China’s recently imposed “redline” of 120 million hectares of cultivated land.