Does Distorted Industrial Land Price Lead to Inefficient Industrial Land Use? -- Take the Yangtze River Economic Zone Cities as an Example

Abstract

This paper uses ML index to measure the industrial land use efficiency of 32 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the impacts of industrial land price and its distortion on the environmental efficiency of urban industrial land use are also analyzed using panel data. The results show that: (1) the industrial land environmental efficiency of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt has improved significantly, the regional central cities perform better in industrial land environmental efficiency, the ML value of midstream and upstream cities arehigher than those of downstream cities; (2) both the regressions without interactive terms and regressions with interactive terms show that industrial land price has a significant positive effect on industrial land environmental efficiency. The coefficients of selection effect and substitution effect are both significantly positive,which means that industrial land price affects the efficiency of industrial land through the mechanism of scale selection and factor substitution. (3) Industrial land price distortion has a significant negative effect on the environmental efficiency of industrial land, while it has a significant positive effect on the general efficiency of industrial land. The findings are useful for determining the rationality of industrial land price in different cities and formulating industrial land price policies.