村庄信任与标会

本文在对温州一个村庄的标会情况进行了比较详尽调查的基础上 ,将村庄共同体理论和信任理论与该村的非正式金融发展现实相结合 ,初步地建立了“村庄信任”这样一个全新的理论概念与分析框架。借助这一分析框架 ,文章认为 :(1 )标会将自由竞标过程与程序、竞争性利率决定、自愿性合作、大众参与、信任等因素实现了有机结合 ,是一种很有效率、活力与竞争力的非正式金融制度安排。 (2 )因为村庄共同体与区域性文化等因素对标会行为的嵌入 (embeddedness) ,小规模、社区性标会在现实运作过程中的风险很小。 (3 )政府在有针对性地加强监管的同时 ,应该允许各种非正式金融的存在与发展。

Village Trust and Bidding Rotating Savings and Credit Associations

Informal financing has been very active in some of the areas due to the insufficient supply of formal finance as well as due to the influences of local culture and traditions to people's economic behavior in rural China. This article examines, as an example, one of the villages in Wenzhou City of Zhejiang Province where the author inquired into the use of bidding Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) over the past decade. Based on the survey from the village, a new theoretical concept and framework of “village trust” has been built up in the paper through integrating village community and trust theories. Correspondingly, three major findings are concluded in the paper: (1) As a kind of informal financial institution, bidding ROSCA is active, efficient and competitive since free bidding of the interest rates, self organized cooperation, mass participation of the people, trust factors are all involved into the operation of such self-governing informal credit system. (2) The risk of bidding ROSCAs in the village is so small that it can be discounted due to the embeddedness of village community and local culture factors into the practice. (3) Therefore, the government should recognize their legitimacy, and support and encourage their growth, at least allow their existence, while monitor and supervise their operation. Based on the experiences from the surveyed village, government monitoring should work on the aspects of membership recognizing and boundary defining of the funds appropriately, range control and purpose clarification clearly and size control of the funds strictly etc.