The confirmation of farmland rights would have a great impact on the welfare of farmers in China. Taking Chinese farmers as the research object, the relationship between farmland rights confirmation, farmland transfer and the welfare of farmers was studied by adopting the propensity score matching method (PSM) and logistic model. The result showed that: (1) The confirmation of farmland rights could improve the welfare of farmers. The dominant factors that affected the impact of the confirmation of farmland rights included family net income, medical insurance, self-health evaluation, difficulty of land financing, stability of land management rights, the difficulty of employment, satisfaction with circulation prices, and the improvement of neighborhood relations. (2) Implementing the confirmation of farmland rights could improve the welfare of farmers, and there were significant differences between farmers. The value of the welfare of farmers who had been transferred out was higher than that of farmers who had been transferred in. (3) After implementing the confirmation of farmland rights, the welfare of farmers would be improved by the net income of the household, the stability of land management rights and the improvement of neighborhood relations, while the welfare of farmers would be hindered from continuous improvement by the difficulty of employment, and satisfaction with circulation prices had opposite effects on the welfare of farmers who had transferred in or out. Based on these results, the suggestions put forward include building a price mechanism of effective circulation, utilizing differentiated skill training, and improving various measurements to show the advantages for welfare of the confirmation of farmland rights.

Urbanization involves expansion of the amount of land covered by urban uses. Rural to urban land conversion (RULC) can satisfy demand for the additional space that growing cities require. However, there can be negative consequences, such as the loss of productive agricultural land and/or the destruction of natural habitats. Considerable interest therefore exists among policy makers and researchers regarding how the efficiency of RULC can be maximized. We used the Gini index and a data envelopment analysis to quantify the relationship between RULC and economic development for 17 metropolitan areas in China. We did this from two perspectives: (i) coordination; and (ii) efficiency. We found that economic agglomeration fosters the coordination of the amount of rural land that is allocated to be converted to urban uses. Similarly, economic agglomeration increases the efficiency of RULC in terms of the processes of socio-economic production. Through production technology innovation and readjustment in the scale of input factors, the productive efficiency of RULC can be promoted. Our findings suggest a need to strictly limit the amount of RULC, design differential land management policies according to location and development level, and adjust RULC allocation between different cities. Further, in harnessing the potential of intensive urban land use and restructuring, production factors, including land, can be enhanced through technological innovation. Research presented in this paper provides insights for areas of the world which are yet to undergo the rapid urbanization that China has experienced, but where it is projected to occur over the coming decades.

The rural collective construction land (RCCL) market imperfections, as well as informal regulations, may have contributed to high transaction costs. Well-functioning land markets play an essential role in land-use revenue, land-use efficiency, and land allocation efficiency for the rural collective economic organization (RCEO). Therefore, specific land-use patterns and detailed transaction rules for the land rental market and land sales market, respectively, make a contribution to a suitable market model with lower transaction costs and higher market efficiency. Through an empirical investigation in Nanhai District, Gungdong Province, this article builds on the theoretical framework of Williamson’s transaction costs, where the asset specificity, uncertainty, and transaction frequency have a significant influence on the RCCL market model choice. Probit model results show that (1) the RCEO prefers to choose the land sales market when the RCCL market has higher asset specificity so that the land sales market can counteract transaction costs by creating land revenue for long-term investments. Thus, the land sales market is a more appropriate choice when the trading land is a large area in a great location. (2) The rental market choice is more suitable for the RCCL market with higher transaction uncertainty. Therefore, the RCEO can detail transaction rules for the land sales and rental markets, respectively. We propose that local governments need to announce regulations for the longest contract period and the land development planning (floor area ratio, building density, floor height, etc.) of different land-use types (industrial land and commercial land) for the land sales market and the land rental market.

Existing research has insufficiently explored the nexus between the new energy industry and CO₂ emissions from the standpoint of export sophistication. This study analyses the implications of the new energy industry’s export sophistication on CO₂ emissions, regional heterogeneity, and its influencing mechanism by gathering data from 31 major economies throughout the world between 1996 and 2021. The study found that the new energy industry’s export sophistication helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and this conclusion still holds after robustness testing; the carbon emission reduction effect of the export sophistication of the new energy industry is more significant in developed countries than in developing countries; the new energy industry’s export sophistication possesses a crowding-out effect on domestic technological progress, which to a certain extent impedes carbon reduction effect. This paper’s findings provide theoretical guidance for the global low-carbon energy transition.