The Study On Labor’s Migration And Agricultural Machinery Investment: Effect And Mechanism

Since the 1980 s,the scale of off-farm migration has been expanding continuously,alleviating the prominent contradiction between people and land in traditional agriculture.However,under the current institutional background,the migration has not changed the dominant position of small farmers in China’s agricultural production and operation,but has gradually shaped the characteristics of an "aging" and "feminized" farming labor,profoundly affecting the production and operation behavior of farming households.This paper takes micro-farming households as the research object and systematically elaborates the effect and mechanism of migration on farming households’ agricultural machinery investment through the combination of theoretical and empirical research.It is beneficial to expand the research perspective in related fields and promote the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture.This paper constructs a farming household model with heterogeneous human capital,and combines the analytical framework of New Economics of Labor Migration(NELM)to study the specific effects of labor’s migration on farming households’ agricultural machinery investment through comparative static analysis.Theoretical research shows that labor migration has a "direct effect" and an "endowment effect" on farming households’ agricultural machinery investment.The former refers to the direct reduction of agricultural machinery investment due to labor’s migration,while the latter mainly refers to the suppression of agricultural machinery investment by migration through the weakening of farming labor and the reduction of land cultivation.Based on this,three research hypotheses are proposed for verification.In the hypothesis testing stage,this paper uses the fixed-effect model(FE)and instrumental variable method(IV)based on the CLDS and CHFS micro-databases,constructs an instrumental variable reflecting the "clan migration network," and provides empirical evidence for the main conclusions of this paper.Empirical results show:(1)The labor’s migration significantly reduces farming households’ agricultural machinery investment,with a 1standard deviation increase in the migration rate resulting in a 15.3% decrease in the value of agricultural machinery investment under the condition that other factors remain unchanged.After overcoming the endogeneity biases caused by omitted variables and bidirectional causality,a robust causal relationship between the two is proven.This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests,including adjusting the clustering level of standard errors,replacing core variables,changing model settings,replacing research samples,and analyzing the exclusivity of instrumental variables.(2)Mechanism analysis found that migration mainly reduces agricultural machinery investment through the "feminization" of the farming labor,while in the sample of "aging" farming households,there is a significant substitution relationship between agricultural labor and agricultural machinery investment.(3)Within the scope of this paper,there is no direct evidence of the impact of migration on the size of land cultivation by farming households,indirectly indicating that current "dual occupation" farming households have not actively participated in the land transfer market.(4)Further research found that,in the absence of an effective land transfer mechanism,migration prompted farming households to adjust their planting structure to adapt to the demand for mechanized power.As the migration rate increased,farming households chose to suppress the planting scale of cash crops,thereby reducing agricultural machinery investment;however,staple crops such as grains relied more on large and medium-sized agricultural machinery,and the demand for machinery by farming households could easily be met through the agricultural machinery service market,so migration do not affect the planting scale of staple crops.(5)Heterogeneity analysis at the regional and geographic levels found that the inhibitory effect of migration on agricultural machinery investment mainly exists in the eastern or plain areas.The research content of this paper provides the following policy implications: In the process of large-scale rural labor migration and structural transformation of agricultural production subjects,it is necessary to continuously improve the agricultural machinery service market,promote the connection between small farmers and large agricultural machinery;innovate small agricultural machinery,enhance the universality of small agricultural machinery;establish a sound land transfer market,and cultivate new types of agricultural management entities.