counterfactual, and does not allow quantification of benefits in a way that can be compared to the cost of the intervention. To provide these and, in doing so, draw out the implications of the experiment in a more systematic manner, more systematic survey evidence is needed.

# **2.3 Analytical approach and data sources**

We use panel data from the National Bureau of Statistics’ regular household survey in 7 counties adjacent to the border of Chengdu prefecture (3 counties inside and 4 outside the boundary),<sup>9</sup> as illustrated in figure 1 to assess household-level effects of Chengdu’s property rights reform on household welfare, time use, inputs into and productivity of agricultural production. A modified regression discontinuity design whereby reform effects are identified by comparing between counties located just inside the prefecture border who were affected by the reform and otherwise comparable ones just outside the border who were not is applied.

Ideally, we would have liked a sample to include data from the same households before and after the reform. The fact that NBS changed its panel of households in 2011 makes this impossible. The ability to use two panel data sets, each with multiple observations per household before and after the reform, still allows us to control for time-invariant household characteristics.<sup>10</sup> This implies that we can use a triple-difference approach that focuses on changes between the first and second panel period for the same households between treated and non-treated households in pre- and post-reform periods.

Given the involvement of supervisors resident in the sample villages and the use of detailed logbooks to record consumption on a daily basis (Chen and Ravallion 1996), NBS data on consumption are considered of exceptionally high quality (Jalan and Ravallion 1999). Beyond information on consumption, the survey includes (less precise) data on income and individual members’ labor supply to farm or off-farm activities, migration, income from different sources, and an account of agricultural output and inputs. We also have data on key village characteristics including total working age population, agricultural land, and distance to public health and education facilities to control for village level time-varying effects.

With 9-13 villages per county and a sample size of 10 households per village, the pre-reform sample comprises a total of 310 and 470 households inside and outside Chengdu, respectively.<sup>11</sup> The post-reform sample similarly includes 280 and 390 households inside and outside the prefecture boundary. After dropping some 5% of sample households who neither engaged in productive activities nor participated in labor markets due to old age or disability, we end up with a sample of 285 pre- and 259 post-reform

> 9 The NBS sample is drawn from a fixed set of counties. We compare outcomes of NBS households in counties from both sides of the Chengdu prefecture border with three counties in Chengdu and four counties in Meishan and Ziyang. 10 We use the years of 2005 and 2006 for the pre-reform and of 2011 and 2012 for the post-reform period. To avoid contamination as land reform was planned and implemented mainly between 2007 and 2009 and maintain a balanced sample from before and after reform implementation.

> 11 The number of selected villages was 9 for Jintang of Chengdu, 10 for Shuangliu of Chengdu, 12 for Qionglai of Chengdu, 13 for Dongpo of Meishan, 12 for Renshou of Meishan, 10 for Lezhi of Ziyang, and 12 for Jianyang of Ziyang.

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