契约谈判视角下的中国农地流转交易成本：形成机理、度量及政策设计

China’s rural land rental market potentially revolutionizes agricultural production and facilitates the factor exchange between the rural and the urban economies. However, prevailingly low contractual formality in China’s rural land rental market results in low-quality land rental contracts, which prevents the market from attaining its full potential in promoting agricultural modernization and unifying the separated urban-rural social structure. Previous literature could hardly explain the prevailingly low quality of China’s rural land rental contracts because they focused on the rate of market participation. Because it is the transaction costs associated with contract bargaining that determine contractual formality, investigating that transaction cost is the key to promoting the quality of China’s rural land rental contracts. This study proposes to (1) theoretically reveal the mechanism that the preference differences between a pair of rental partners caused by the separated urban-rural social structure creates a transaction cost in contract bargaining, which improves the previous theoretical understanding of transaction costs as fixed costs; (2) empirically measure the transaction costs in a structural estimation using newly collected transactional data, which improves previous reduced-form measurements of transaction costs using rural household survey data and sufficiently solves the problem of endogeneity; and (3) provide policy implications through interpreting rental scales and market concentration from the perspective of the transaction costs and studying the impacts of village institutions on that transaction costs.

中国农地流转市场承载着构建现代农业生产经营体系和激活城乡要素流动的重要功能。然而，中国农地流转契约规范性较低，导致流转交易质量不高，阻碍了该市场推进农业现代化和城乡融合的进程。虽然文献对稳步攀升的流转交易数量进行了大量研究，却较少解释流转交易质量持续较低的动因。鉴于契约规范性取决于契约谈判中交易成本的高低，提高流转交易质量的关键是系统性认知该交易成本。本项目计划：(1)在理论上突破交易成本即为外生固定成本的简易建模方法，研究尚未充分融合的城乡关系对交易双方契约规范性偏好差异的影响，从而解析契约谈判内生形成交易成本的机理；(2)在实证研究中突破农户抽样数据限制下对交易成本的简化式度量，构建交易层级数据，对交易成本进行结构式度量，以充分解决内生性问题；(3)在政策建议方面，从交易成本角度解读流转规模和市场集中化程度，以探索村级制度对交易成本的影响路径，并为完善农地流转市场管理制度提供政策指导。

中国农地流转市场承载着构建现代农业生产经营体系和激活城乡要素流动的重要功能。本项目在尚未融合的城乡关系下，通过对农地流转交易成本的研究，阐释了我国农地流转交易质量不高的核心动因，将文献对中国农地流转市场的研究视角从交易的“量”拓展到交易的“质”，将文献对中国农地流转市场的研究层级从农户层级拓展到交易层级乃至村级市场层级。..本项目（1）在理论研究中，突破了交易成本即为外生固定成本的简易建模方法，发现了城乡二元结构导致的租出方非农就业不确定性是造成流转交易成本的根本原因，揭示了农地流转交易成本的形成机理；（2）在实证研究中，突破了农户抽样数据限制下对流转交易成本的简易式度量，构建了流转交易层级数据，结构式度量了流转交易成本的货币化价值，直观反映了流转交易成本对农地流转市场发展的阻碍程度，具有较强的政策参考价值；（3）在政策设计中，突破了农户层级研究视角，从交易成本的角度探究了村级制度对农地流转村级市场发育程度的影响，挖掘了乡村治理在推动农地流转市场进一步发展中的新作用，为完善农地流转市场管理制度提供了政策指导；（4）在拓展研究中，厘清了农户在农地流转决策与劳动力配置决策中的逻辑次序，构建了“外出务工—农地流转—创业”两步贯序决策框架，发现农地流转不仅促进了劳动力转移而且鼓励了农民创业，推进了劳动力转移的形式升级，揭示了农地流转对城乡融合的新作用，为实现乡村振兴提供了新路径。..这一系列研究深化了文献对农地流转交易成本，特别是城乡二元结构导致的流转交易成本的认知，洞悉了城乡关系与农地流转交易之间的双向影响路径，探索了打破我国农地流转市场低质发展瓶颈的关键，这将有利于协同实现农地流转市场的高质量发展与城乡关系全面融合的新格局，加快推进农业现代化，全面实现乡村振兴。