Property Rights, Labour Markets, and Efficiency in a Transition Economy: The Case of Rural China

This paper investigates the consequences of imperfect and uneven factor market development for farm efficiency in rural China during transition. In particular, we estimate the extent to which an inverse relationship in farm productivity can be attributed to the administrative (instead of market) allocation of land, and the extent of unevenly developed non-agricultural opportunities. Using a recently collected household survey, we show that a considerable amount of inefficiency exists in the countryside, especially in the employment of labour. Our results show that this inefficiency is alleviated by the development of external labour markets, and that in the context of the current imperfect market environment, administrative reallocations help improve on the margin both efficiency and equity. They do not go far enough, however, which raises important questions about constraints on rental activity, the link between admin istrative reallocation and decentralized land exchange, and property rights formation more generally.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39903/3/wp518.pd

Agriculture and Income Distribution in Rural Vietnam under Economic Reforms: A Tale of Two Regions

This paper exploits the panel dimension of the Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS) in order to analyze the main changes occurring in agriculture in Vietnam over the period 1993- 1998. This period was marked by a continuation of the reforms that began in 1988 with the implementation of Resolution 10, Vietnam’s own version of the Chinese Household Responsibility System. We focus on the impact of two main policy changes: first, the increase in the rice export quota and the significant increase in the price of rice, especially in the south; second, liberalization of the fertilizer market and the sharp drop in the price of fertilizer. To this end, we document changes in the empirically observable “institutional environment,” exploring changes in rice and other crop prices as well as fertilizer prices. With this as background, we explore changes in r ice production, consumption and marketing, and their links to changes in prices and incomes. We also estimate the degree to which these increases can be “explained” by increased use of inputs like fertilizer, cropping intensity, and increased yields. Finally, we investigate the distributional impacts of these changes, including a detailed examination of the linkages between rice marketing and income distribution using nonparametric econometric techniques. We find that the agricultural reforms had a largely beneficial impact on the well being of rural households throughout Vietnam, but that farmers in the south gained most, consistent with expectations given the policy changes. More generally, our conclusions suggest that market reforms can have a significant impact on incentives, without adverse consequences for income distribution.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39904/3/wp519.pd

Bank Discrimination in Transition Economies: Ideology, Information or Incentives?

We study bank discrimination against private firms in transition countries. Theoretically, we show that banks may discriminate for non-profit reasons, but this discrimination diminishes with a bank’s incentives and human capital. Employing matching bank-firm data from China, we empirically examine the extent, sources and consequences of discrimination. Our unique survey design allows us to disentangle sample truncation, omitted variable bias, and endogeneity issues. Our empirical findings confirm the theoretical predictions. We also find that as a result of discrimination, private firms resort to more expensive trade credits.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39902/3/wp517.pd

The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections

The belief that elections reduce rent seeking by government officials is widely held, likewise the belief that rent seeking decreases as elections are less subject to corruption. In this paper we develop and test a model in which these beliefs are carefully examined. Our model indicates that, while elections may provide a disincentive for rent seeking, this disincentive (1) need not actually materialise, and (2), is not necessarily correlated with the integrity of the electoral protocol. We next consider the ability of village-level elections in rural China to reduce rent seeking, and the extent to which this ability varies as the elections are more or less corruptible. We find that in practice, even elections that appear quite corruptible provide a strong disincentive to rent seeking. Moreover, our results indicate which types of electoral reform lead to more effective popular oversight of leaders, and which do not.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39988/3/wp602.pd

The Fight for the Middle: Upgrading, Competition, and Industrial Development in China

When China acceded to WTO in 2001, there were fears that Chinese firms would lose market share in key sectors to foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). Although aggregate data often indicate a shift in favour of FIEs, indigenous firms in many cases have slowly increased market share and deepened their technical capabilities. Through an analysis of aggregate data and three sectors, we show how the dynamics of competition between Chinese and FIEs in China's domestic market enhance the upgrading prospects for Chinese firms. China represents a new model of development in several important respects: industrial upgrading efforts are often domestically-driven, within this domestic market there is intense competition between both domestic and foreign firms, and this competition is driving and stimulating the upgrading efforts of domestic firms.China, industrialization, FDI, upgrading, value-chains, emerging markets, automotive

Informal Credit in Village Economies: Contract Duration with Personal and Community Enforcement

This paper provides an explanation for several important features of informal credit contracts negotiated in economies where households lack collateral, and ready access to legal authorities and formal financial institutions is absent. Our analysis highlights the choice between loans with well-defined repayment periods (fixed durations) and those that are open-ended (no duration). We argue that households negotiate fixed- duration loans only when the borrower's ability to repay is private information, and borrowers enjoy non-credit (social) exchanges with lenders that can be withdrawn to encourage loan repayment. Other differences in loan terms can be explained by the exclusive availability of collective loan enforcement to lenders and borrowers residing in the same community. Drawing on a unique household-level survey, we find empirical support for our model's explanation for duration and the size of loans, as well as borrower's repayment behavior. Our analysis also highlights a negative externality among informal personal and community enforcement mechanisms whereby the availability of both mechanisms in the same village reduces the payments that can be credibly promised with either one.

Property Rights, Labor Markets, and Efficiency in a Transition Economy: The Case of Rural China

This paper investigates the consequences of imperfect and uneven factor market development for farm efficiency in rural China. In particular, we estimate the extent to which an inverse relationship in farm productivity can be attributed to the administrative (instead of market) allocation of land, and the extent of unevenly developed non-agricultural opportunities. Using a recently collected household survey, we show that a considerable amount of inefficiency exists in the countryside, especially in the employment of labor. Our results show that this inefficiency is alleviated by the development of external labor markets, but perhaps more surprisingly, that in the context of the current imperfect market environment, administrative reallocations help improve both efficiency and equity on the margin. They do not go far enough, however, which raises important questions about constraints on rental activity and the link between administrative reallocation and decentralized land exchange.

Spatial Price Differences in China: Estimates and Implications

Prices differ across space: from province to province, from rural (or urban) areas in one province to rural (or urban) areas in another province, and from rural to urban areas within one province. Systematic differences in prices across a range of goods and services in different localities imply regional differences in the costs of living. If high- income provinces also have high costs of living, and low-income provinces have low costs of living, the use of nominal income measures in explaining such economic outcomes as inequality can lead to misinterpretations. Income should be adjusted for costs of living. We are interested in the sign and magnitude of the adjustments needed, their changes over time, and their impact on economic outcomes in China. In this article, we construct a set of (rural, urban, total) provincial- level spatial price deflators for the years 1984-2002 that can be used to obtain provincial-level income measures adjusted for purchasing power. We provide illustrations of the significant effect of ignoring spatial price differences in the analysis of China’s economy.spatial deflators, inequality, income differences, regional absolute price levels, China

The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections

The belief that elections reduce rent seeking by government officials is widely held, likewise the belief that rent seeking decreases as elections are less subject to corruption. In this paper we develop and test a model in which these beliefs are carefully examined. Our model indicates that, while elections may provide a disincentive for rent seeking, this disincentive (1) need not actually materialise, and (2), is not necessarily correlated with the integrity of the electoral protocol. We next consider the ability of village-level elections in rural China to reduce rent seeking, and the extent to which this ability varies as the elections are more or less corruptible. We find that in practice, even elections that appear quite corruptible provide a strong disincentive to rent seeking. Moreover, our results indicate which types of electoral reform lead to more effective popular oversight of leaders, and which do not.Elections, Property rights, China

Accounting for China's Growth

China has achieved impressive growth over the last three decades. However, there has been debate over the sources of the growth, and the role of the intensive versus extensive margin. Growth accounting exercises at the aggregate level (Rawski and Perkins, 2008; Bosworth and Collins, 2008) suggest an equal role for both. But for the non-agricultural sector, there have been doubts about the contribution of TFP improvements to growth. For the period between 1978 and 1998, Young (2003) stresses the role of labor deepening, including the reallocation from agriculture, while more recent analysis point to the role of rising rates of investment. Because labor reallocations across sectors, TFP growth at the sector level and investment are all inter-related, simple growth decompositions that are often used in the literature are not appropriate for quantifying their contributions to growth. In this paper, we develop a three sector model to quantify the sources of China's growth. The sectors include agriculture, and within non-agriculture, the state and non-state components. We find only a modest role for labor reallocation and capital deepening, and identify rising TFP in the non-state nonagricultural sector as the key driver of growth. We also find significant misallocation of capital: The much less efficient state sector continues to absorb more than half of all fixed investment. If capital had been allocated efficiently, China could have achieved the same growth performance without any increase in the rate of aggregate investment. This has important implications for China as it tries to rebalance its growth. Finally, in light of important concerns over data, we examine the robustness of our key results to alternative dataChina, Growth, TFP, Investment, intensive vs extensive margins