The Impact of Agricultural Land Property Rights System Reform on Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity

This study aims to evaluate the impact of agricultural land property rights system reform on Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity (AGTFP) and to uncover its underlying mechanisms. Treating the nationwide rollout of the Three Rights Separation Reform (TRSR) as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ provincial panel data from 2011 to 2023. The Super-SBM model is applied to measure AGTFP, followed by a multi-period Difference-in-Differences framework to identify the causal effects. The results indicate that the TRSR significantly enhances AGTFP, yielding an average improvement of 0.112 units. Mechanism analyses reveal that this gain is achieved through three distinct channels: promoting labor-saving technological progress, optimizing factor allocation efficiency, and facilitating agricultural green transformation. Heterogeneity analyses further demonstrate that the positive effects are more pronounced in plains regions, areas with lower rural per capita income, and jurisdictions with higher agricultural fiscal expenditure. These findings remain robust after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. This study provides novel institutional evidence on the drivers of AGTFP and offers policy-relevant insights for advancing sustainable agricultural transformation in developing economies.