Abstract
Exploring the relationship between land finance and regional integration is of great significance for optimizing the land management system and promoting high-quality development. Previous studies focused on the impact of land finance on regional development, and rarely concerned the role of regional integration on land revenue. This study reveals the internal association mechanisms between land finance and regional integration, which might provide an integrated theoretical and empirical support for the coordinated development between urban land market and regional economy. We firstly provide a theoretically analytical framework for the relationship between the size of land finance, reliance on land finance, and regional integration, and three hypotheses are proposed. On this basis, an econometric analysis is conducted based on the panel data of the urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR) from 2003 to 2016. The results show that an increased amount of land finance revenue promotes the level of regional integration. Specifically, for every 1% increase in the size of land finance of UAMRYR, Wuhan city-clusters, and Chang-Zhu-Tan city-clusters, the level of regional integration will increase by 0.000040%, 0.000021%, and 0.000089%, respectively. Besides, the degree of land finance dependence has a negative impact on the level of regional integration. The threshold regression analysis indicates an inverted U–shaped curve could reflect the relationship between the level of regional integration and the degree of land financial dependence. This study argues that the governments in a particular urban agglomeration should clarify the net effect of the size of land finance and their reliance on land finance, and rationally introducing development strategy according to the synergy between land finance and regional integration.
Highlights
All of them have passed the significance tests. This indicates that for every 1% increase in the size of land finance of URMRYR, Wuhan city-clusters, and Chang-Zhu-Tan city-clusters, the level of regional integration will increase by 0.000040%, 0.000021%, and 0.000089%, respectively
At three sub-urban agglomerations levels, our results reveal that regional integration may first encourage and suppress land finance dependence when RI-lag was defined as a threshold variable
Land finance serves as a supplement to local fiscal revenue to maintain the basic functions of local governments [1]
Summary
Land finance, which refers to land-based finance that public land development rights are used as a basis to receive off-budgetary revenue [1,2], has long attracted worldwide attention. There are two modes of land finance in China, including land transfer-centered mode and land investment-centered mode [5]. China is characterized by the latter, as it gained considerably fiscal revenue through sales, leasing, acquisition, and resale of public land. Since the reform of the tax-sharing system in 1994, land finance in China has become the major source in the local fiscal budget [6]. With the development of urbanization and industrialization, the size of China’s land finance has experienced growth at a rapid and unprecedented rate
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