Search Results (2)

The land price reflects the supply and demand relationship in the land market and plays an important role in regulating land use. Improving land auction rules is of great significance for avoiding abnormal fluctuations in the land market and promoting the sustainable use of land resources. To regulate the abnormal fluctuations in the state-owned land use rights’ auction prices, Chinese local governments have implemented a “sealed one-time bidding, average price wins” rule. However, limited theoretical and empirical research that assesses its policy impact exists. This study examines the policy motivations behind this rule, constructing three game models; namely, static complete information, static incomplete information, and multiperiod repeated games. By deducing bidding strategies and equilibrium results, hypotheses are formulated. A baseline difference-in-differences (DID) and a dynamic policy effect model are designed, and the Python crawler is used to obtain 1182 microland auction samples in Suzhou. This study evaluates the impact of the one-time bidding rule on the starting prices, transaction prices, and premium rates. The empirical results underwent multiple robustness tests, eliminating potential endogeneity issues and biases. The results show that while the policy is effective in restraining the premium rate, indicating the bidding intensity in single-land auctions, it proves challenging to curb the long-term rise in land prices through continuous bidding auctions. Moreover, the policy may stimulate local governments to increase auction starting prices. Full article

Land finance has become an important way of generating fiscal incomes in developing countries, while the urban–rural income gap (URIG) in developing countries remains high. However, existing research has not paid much attention to the connection between land finance and the URIG. Therefore, this study used a fixed-effects model to test this relationship for 275 prefecture-level cities in China from 2014 to 2017. To identify the effects of the potential omitted variables, this study conducted additional robustness checks using placebo tests. The results showed that land finance significantly widened the URIG, and this finding was maintained after a set of tests. Further study found that the effect of land finance on the URIG showed significant heterogeneity. Land grants by tender, listing, and auction significantly widened the URIG, while land grants by agreement did not affect the URIG; the effect of land finance on the URIG was more significant in Eastern and Middle regions, but not marked in Western regions; and land finance had no impact on the URIG in large and medium-sized cities, while it had a significant impact in small cities. Based on the above results, this study offers recommendations to improve land fiscal policy and urban-biased development strategies, which aim to promote the equalization of the basic rights and interests of urban and rural residents and reduce the URIG. Full article