Has China’s Pilot Policy of Farmland Management Right Mortgage Loan Promoted County Agricultural Economic Growth?

Abstract

Farmland mortgages are expected to drive county agricultural economic growth (CAEG) as a crucial component of furthering the reform of the rural land system and the reform of the rural financial system against the new backdrop of the new era. This study gathers panel data from 2045 Chinese counties from 2011 to 2020 and uses the difference-in-differences method and the synthetic control method to systematically examine the effects of China’s farmland management right mortgage loan (FMRML) pilot program on CAEG. The FMRML pilot program was implemented in 2016, and this research is presented as a quasi-natural experiment. The findings indicate that there is a “policy trap” and that CAEG has not been successfully promoted by the FMRML pilot program. The reason for this is because the pilot program has made county resource mismatch worse, making it unable to fully realize the promotional effect on CAEG, rather than significantly activating the three key drivers of agricultural economic growth: people, land, and money. The impact of the FMRML pilot policy on CAEG is not uniform, according to the results of the heterogeneity study, with a substantial “blocking” effect only in the central region and no significant influence in the western, northeastern, or eastern regions. The findings propose that in order to optimize agricultural mortgage policy and advance CAEG, China and other emerging nations can benefit greatly from the insights this study offers.