Reforms of China's rural credit cooperatives and policy options

This paper provides an overview of the major reforms to rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) since the middle 1990s and discusses future challenges for RCCs, including unfinished RCC reforms. The focus is on ownership structure, corporate governance, and the historical burdens of RCCs. The paper also presents the official line for future RCC reforms.     

中国信用制度建设的现状和模式选择

信用在一国经济发展中起着极其重要的作用,而现在我国社会信用体系发育程度低和普遍的信用失衡问题突显了出来,成为制约经济持续健康发展和完善社会主义市场经济体制的突出问题之一。所以,在借鉴国外信用建设的基础上,结合中国的实际,寻找出适合经济发展特点的信用建设模式,是     

Diversify and prosper: Peasant households participating in emerging markets in northeast rural China

Following the sequence of radical rural reforms commencing in 1978, many peasant households in the People's Republic of China (PRC) have been actively diversifying away from time-honored grain production. This article examines the microlevel rewards accruing to a sample of village households located in the northeast province of Liaoning. In particular, we identify and then measure how such diversification affects household income, the level of employment, and the returns to labor. Two explanatory variables are constructed as surrogates for income-source diversification in a series of household production functions. Our results provide robust evidence that households that move from grain enhance significantly several indicators of their economic well-being.     

Emerging markets, evolving institutions, and the new opportunities for growth in China's rural economy

In this essay, our goal is to assess the state of China's rural economy and examine whether rural China is capable of participating in the sequence of economic events that will lead to modernization. We examine how agricultural productivity has changed, the nature of the shift of labor moving from rural to urban areas, how commodity markets have evolved, and how the rural industrial sector is adjusting the recent reforms. According to our own work and that of others, we show how the rural economy is beginning to be fundamentally transformed and is contributing to China's modernization.     

我国农村信用合作社治理模式和外国成功模式的比较研究

合作社最早产生于19世纪中叶的欧洲,从德国的第一家农村信用社成立至今,合作金融经历了160多年的发展,在世界范围内被广泛运用,虽然在发展道路上各国不太一样,但它们至今保留的共通的丰富经验是值得我国借鉴学习的,借鉴这些经验对我国的信用社建设及优化治理结构具有重要的现实意义。     

The spirit of capitalism? Ethnicity, religion, and self-employment in early 20th century Canada

This paper examines self-employment in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century. Self-employment 100 years ago was associated with greater human capital and negatively related to earnings in employee occupations in the local district. We also find strong evidence of immigrant assimilation in self-employment and modest evidence of higher self-employment in enclaves with greater concentration of immigrants. An analysis of recent immigrants supports the hypothesis that liquidity constraints were an important determinant of self-employment. Christian affiliation had little impact on self-employment outcomes.     

Inequality of opportunity in earnings in rural China

This paper explores the role of ‘inequality of opportunity’ in individual earnings in rural China, which is attributed to ‘circumstantial’ factors over which individuals have no control, including family background, gender, ethnic minority status and region of birth. These circumstances are contrasted with ‘efforts’ or choices that individuals make, which also impact on their individual earnings. Utilising the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) 2014, I measure the share of inequality of opportunity in the overall inequality of individual annual earnings for the entire sample and for each of four ten-year birth cohorts in rural China. The empirical results revealed that the share of inequality of opportunity in individual earnings for the full sample is 20.4% of the GE(0) coefficient. The adoption of machine learning methods provides a wide range of estimates between 16.4% (regression tress) and 25.4% (forests). Across all birth cohorts, gender is consistently the largest single contributor to inequality of opportunity, while family background is relatively more important for younger cohorts. A closer investigation indicates that those who find themselves in the worst circumstances are likely to exert lower level of effort, not because they don’t want to try harder, but because their circumstances prevent them from doing so.     

Housing markets in China: an empirical evaluation of present-value model

Derived from the present-value model, our model implies that house price is a linear function of expected house rents and the expected rate of growth of house rents where expectations are formed adaptively. The model is used to explain the link between expected inflation and expected house rental growth rates. The estimated parameters of the housing markets in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen were compared.     

Migration and household investment in rural China

In this paper, we demonstrate how household investment is affected by participation in migration in rural China. We both describe investment patterns across different regions of China and by households with different experiences with migration. We then describe a set of hypotheses about the relationship between migration and investment, and test the hypotheses using household data that we collected in rural China in 2000. We find that in areas with median incomes that are more than twice the poverty line, migration is associated with investment in housing and other consumer durables that is 20% higher than the average. We find no evidence of a link between migration and productive investment.     

Soil and water conservation investments and rural development in China

This study uses a unique set of annual provincial data on soil and water conservation (SWC) investments during the period 1989–2005 to estimate the impact of such investments on the extent and severity of erosion, the growth rate of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) and rural poverty reduction in China. We find that SWC investments made by local governments have a significant negative impact on the extent of erosion and (in recent years) the severity of erosion, whereas SWC investments made by farm households until recently had a significant negative effect on the severity of erosion. In its turn, the severity of erosion is found to have a significant negative impact on agricultural GDP. Estimation of the impact of the extent of erosion on agricultural GDP provides mixed results. Based on these results, we derive that one RMB invested in SWC by local governments increases agricultural GDP in 2002 with 0.84–1.25 RMB. Finally, we find that agricultural GDP has a significant negative impact on the rural poverty rate. The resulting indirect effect of SWC investment on rural poverty reduction, however, is small compared to other types of public investment. We conclude that (local) government investments in SWC do not only serve environmental goals, but also make a non-negligible contribution to agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction.     

Bank credit and seasonal anomalies in China's stock markets

In this paper, we uncover seasonal anomalies in the Chinese A-share stock markets and examine to what extent they can be explained by bank credit. For the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets over the 1993–2003 period with both monthly and quarterly data, we reject three series of priors: (i) Changes in regulation and investor behavior lead us to expect substantial alterations in the pattern of stock prices, especially in the late 1990s. However, the use of unobserved-components models enables us to uncover no evidence for changes in seasonal patterns over time, once outliers and structural breaks have been properly accounted for. An unchanging positive June effect and a negative December effect have been at work since 1993. (ii) We expect differences between the behavior of prices in Shenzhen and Shanghai, both at the level of the index and in their attractiveness for investors. We find evidence of very similar movements in seasonality between the two markets whatever the frequency. (iii) Seasonality in returns is often considered to be generated by the unofficial channeling of bank credit to the stock market. We find that seasonal effects in returns are robust to the inclusion of bank credit.     

The impact of institutional reform from 1979 through 1987 on fertility in rural China

This empirical study brings together data on the local timing of the rural household responsibility system (HRS) reforms in China from 1979 through 1987 and assesses the association of the local reforms with individual parity-specific fertility changes as measured in the in-depth fertility survey. Fertility appears to have increased slightly in 1982 through 1984, but declined in 1985 through 1987, in the wake of these significant economic reforms. It is hypothesized that the reforms increased the private monetary and opportunity cost of childbearing and intensified market competition for the adoption of new production technologies that encouraged parents to educate their children better, while increasing the mobility of the rural labor force and thereby discouraging and delaying childbearing among rural Chinese.     

Modalities of Microfinance Delivery in Asia and Latin America： Lessons for China

I. Introduction Microfinance, the provision of small size loans and other financial services to low income households, is often seen as the key innovation of the last 25 years in terms of means of reaching out to the poor and vulnerable. There is extensive experience in microfinanceprovision in both Asia and Latin America, but as yet relatively little use of the approach in China. In Section, this paper assesses different approaches to microfinance delivery using a simple threefold distincti…     

The role of borrowing in crisis coping among ultra-poor households in rural Bangladesh

In this study, we show how decisions to borrow from different formal and informal sources are associated with different types of disasters. We estimate the associations between loans from different sources using monthly panel data from Northern Bangladesh. Households borrow from different sources to cope with disasters. The cost of loans, however, may vary by the source of funds. MFI loans, while low in terms of interest cost, usually require a savings deposit, loan or application fee, with a longer trip or waiting time. Hence, households resort to loans from informal sources to deal with crises. We estimate the impulse responses of loans from different sources, which clearly show a hump-shape centring for the months of disasters. Pre-emptive loans are associated only with partially anticipated shocks. Aggregate shocks also limit how much households can borrow from their local peers. Our findings rationalise the roles played by both informal and formal micro-loans in crisis coping in Bangladesh, where the market for microfinance is ubiquitous. The development of the emergency credit market and the introduction of insurance services in rural areas will require the non-price costs of such financial products to be lowered.     

The choice between PIPE and SEO in China

China's private investment in public equity (PIPE) market has exceeded the aggregate proceeds raised by its seasoned equity offering (SEO) market. Taking into account the institutional and regulatory backgrounds of China's secondary equity markets, this paper examines how listed firms choose between PIPE and SEO. Firms with both options tend to be induced by the greater flexibility in its equity offering mechanism to choose PIPE over SEO, particularly when stock price volatility is high or the market is performing poorly. SEO issuers are more likely to time the stock market. Post issuance abnormal returns, in both short- and long-run tend to be higher for PIPE than for SEO issuers.     

Consumer Credit Risk Management in an Emerging Market： The Case of China

I. Introduction By any measure, China is now the world hottest economy, with an astonishing annual real GDP growth rate of 9 percent from 1991 to 2003 and with the world’s largest population of nearly 1.3 billion people. As one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies,Consumer Credit Risk Management in China87 ?2006 The Authors Journal compilation ?2006 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences there are tremendous opportunities for glo…     

国际结算中我国出口企业面临的信用证风险及其防范

伴随我国加入到WTO,国际贸易日渐充实频繁,作为在国际结算中占突出地位的结算方式的信用证也渐渐受到我国外贸出口企业业务人员的信赖,但是信用证并不是完全的安全,它也存在一定程度的风险。为此,采用良好的防范措施是相当有必要的。     

中国西南地区面向东南亚的区域专业化分工与合作研究

全球化的发展加强了各国间的经济联系,促进了国际区域间的专业化分工与合作。文章认为,中国西南地区与东南亚各国间的经济联系伴随中国——东盟贸易自由区的建成而更加紧密。中国西南地区与东南亚之间在区域差异的基础上,基于外部竞争压力与内部发展诉求,会在现有有利合作条件下,形成有利于双方的区域专业化分工与合作格局。     

Producers, Processors, and Procurement Decisions: The Case of Vegetable Supply Chains in China

This study examines how different supply chain characteristics impose different coordination costs on vegetable processors. The results provide a basis for understanding the relative importance of four alternative supply chain characteristics to vegetable processors: (1) the size of the producers’ production base; (2) the distance between the producer and the processing plant; (3) the level of detail specified in the contract between processors and grower; and (4) whether the producer has food safety certification. Vegetable processors from Laiyang County, Shandong province, China’s largest horticultural production and export region, provide the data underlying the following analysis. Conjoint analysis suggests that the vegetable processors consider the size of the production units as the most important supply chain characteristic influencing their choice of producers, followed by distance to producer, type of contract and food safety certification.