Improved fiscal transfer payment for farmland protection under imbalanced land development: Taking China's fees for newly increased construction land as an example

The fiscal transfer payment for farmland protection is an important policy tool to address the social injustice resulting from imbalanced land development and realize regional coordinated development between farmland protection area and non-agricultural development area both in the developed and developing countries. The performance of transfer payment system is directly determined by the fiscal fund distribution. Taking China's fees for newly increased construction land (FNICL, xinzengfei ) as an example, this paper determines the distribution relationship and improves the mechanism of fiscal transfer payment according to the local food security and ecological security spillovers, on the basis of the principle of matching fiscal revenue and responsibility. Moreover, the improved distribution is compared with the one in practice. The results show that: (1) There exists spillover of local responsibility of farmland protection in China generally, which needs to be compensated by the fiscal transfer payment of the central government; (2) There are 25 local governments with spillover of farmland protection responsibilities at provincial level, and 6 localities without spillover, the former should be compensated by fiscal fund distribution, the latter shouldn't. And the distribution in each province is determined by the contribution; (3) The improved transfer payment distribution from the perspective of match of fiscal revenue and responsibility has increase change mainly in China's major production provinces of grain, cotton and oil, and decreases mostly in remote areas of Northwest and Southwest China compared with the one in practice; (4) The performance of fiscal transfer payment system for farmland protection has been improved significantly under the improved distribution mode from the perspective of matching fiscal revenue and responsibility. The findings can be contributed to China's ongoing transfer fiscal payment institutional innovation for farmland preservation, which can also be duplicated in the transitional economies worldwide.