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Environmental degradation manifests itself both at the local and the global level. In order to avoid further environmental degradation environmental quality should be considered as a target of economic policy. The article provides a documentary overview of important environmental studies and shows the results of an empirical scenario study for The Netherlands. Finally, some policy implications of the problem of global warming as a result of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of perceived land tenure security in China on farmers' decisions to invest in relatively long‐term land quality improvement measures, taking into account the potential endogeneity of tenure security.

Data from a survey held in 2008 and 2010 among 259 households in Minle County, Gansu province, covering the years 2007 and 2009, are used to estimate the factors affecting land levelling investments, irrigation canal investments and perceived land tenure security. The authors use the 2SCML technique and the IVLS method to estimate a selection model and a non‐limited regression model, respectively, and use IVP methods to examine the robustness of the results.

The authors' results indicate that perceived land tenure security significantly affects self‐governed investments but does not affect individual investments in land quality improvements. In particular, the authors find that households that consider land certificates as important for protecting land rights invest significantly more in irrigation canals construction and maintenance. The authors' results further provide evidence that individual investments in land quality improvement contribute to higher perceived land tenure security.

The paper contributes to the available literature on the relationship between land tenure security and land investments by examining the role of perceived (instead of formal) land tenure security and by making a distinction between individual household investments and self‐governed land investments. The authors' results provide an explanation for the phenomenon that land readjustments still take place in some parts of China, but not in others.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of off-farm labor employments on household land rental behavior in rural China.

IV-Probit and IV-Tobit model are used to identify the estimate of interest.

The results indicate that households with more members participating in either migration or local off-farm work are more/less likely to rent out/in land. Moreover, the effect of migration on household land rental behavior is much larger than the effect of local off-farm work.

These results suggest that ensuring benefits of migrants in urban cities can automatically promote household land rental behavior in rural China.

The authors provide a rigorous and careful empirical analysis on the effect of off-farm employment on household land rental behavior and pay special attention to the endogeneity issue tackled using separable instruments.