Cheng, Dan

Property rights arrangements play a critical role in resource allocation efficiency. However, previous studies have given limited attention to the impact of family-shared property rights on resource distribution—a form of ownership situated between public and private rights. We explores this issue within the context of China's land contractual management rights system. Using a dataset of 791 rural household surveys from Sichuan, Chongqing, and Hubei provinces, we apply a Logit model to assess how family-based land contractual management rights influence land transfer behavior and examine the moderating effect of household differentiation. Our findings indicate that, in contrast to private ownership, joint family property significantly promotes land transfers, primarily by facilitating land acquisition, thereby expanding the scale of agricultural operations. Additionally, household differentiation weakens the land transfer-promoting effect of joint family ownership within the land contractual management rights system. This research advance the literature on property rights arrangements by highlighting the discrepancy between the efficiency-maximizing theory of private property and the practical realities in China, thereby offering important policy implications for promoting land transfer.