This study investigates the effect of a large-scale Internet upgrade program in China on the consumption of rural households. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, we find that the Internet upgrade at the village level significantly increases rural households’ expenditures on total, online, and ofline consumption. Moreover, high-educated and young households, as well as those living in difficult-to-access villages exhibit a larger boost in total consumption. The mechanism analysis rules out income as the possible channel but highlights the role of online information exchange. ln particular, the variations in the increase in online time among households align with the heterogeneous responses in total consumption.

Rural banking competition may promote or hinder agricultural total factor productivity (TFP). We analyze a novel dataset on all commercial bank branches in rural China, combined with measures of productivity based on stochastic frontier analysis. To identify causality, we use: 1) an instrumental variable approach based on the administrative division of banks, and 2) a propensity score matching difference-in-difference approach exploiting banking de-regulations in 2009. Both methods reveal that competition has a positive impact on TFP. A heterogeneity analysis finds that the effect is primarily significant along the Beijing-Kowloon railway and its East side. Technology adoption is the typical channel through which lending is hypothesized to impact TFP. We find that the positive effect of competition is larger in areas with greater technology use, but we find an insignificant direct impact of concentration on technology adoption, suggesting the channels of effect may be more complex than previously thought.

While cities piloting China’s Social Credit System attract attention, rural areas in China are experimenting with reputation-based credit systems called ‘banks of virtue’. These local institutions unlock cheap loans and other benefits for citizens who prove virtuous character. Based on empirical data, this article investigates how banks of virtue combine techniques of metrics known from capitalist credit systems with an inherently localized and personal evaluation procedure. As hybrid forms of organizing access to credit, this article argues, banks of virtue of er an alternative, rural answer to the ‘right to credit’ that emerged in debates concerning capitalist economies. While they combine multiple goals of the national rural revitalization and Social Credit System strategies, such as the creation of a ‘civilized’ rural society and the allocation of credit to small businesses and households, their reliance on citizen participation casts doubts over their capacity to achieve these goals.

This study investigates the impact of the land rental market (LRM) on labor productivity in rural China. Particular attention is given to farm and non-farm labor productivity. Using 2012 household-level data and a multinomial endogenous switching treatment regression (MESTR) technique, we find that rural households renting-in farmland increased labor productivity in the farm sector by about 55%, while labor productivity in the non-farm sector decreased by about 6%. We also find that rural households renting-out farmland had lower labor productivity in both the farm and non-farm sectors by 13% and 9%, respectively. More family labor transferred from the farm to the non-farm sector after renting-out land.

China frequently suffers from weather related natural disasters and is a source of wide-spread systemic risk throughout large swaths of China. During these periods farmers crops are at risk and for a largely poor population few can afford the turmoil to livelihoods that goes along with drought. Throughout the developing world there is serious interest in index-based weather insurance for agriculture, and in China the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is investigating the insurability of weather related risk. Beyond that little formal research has appeared on either the demand, use or design of index insurance in China. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of farmers’ willingness to pay for drought insurance. Based on a survey of over 890 farm households in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces the results show that while there is significant demand, price may be an issue. Our results show that the majority of farm households would transition from a no-demand state to a demand state as prices fall. This suggests that in order to gain wide gain adoption there may be a need for governmental intervention.

This paper examines the relationship between the large-scale construction of broadband infrastructure and digital financial inclusion in rural China. To make causal inferences, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment and use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with panel dataset of Chinese counties from 2014 to 2018. The results show that broadband infrastructure significantly contributes to digital inclusion. Further, we distinguish between two dimensions of digital inclusion, namely, the coverage and the usage. We find that while broadband infrastructure significantly promotes the coverage dimension, its effect on the usage dimension is limited. Besides, the effects of broadband infrastructure on digital inclusion, and in particular on the usage dimension, are larger in areas with higher levels of human capital, higher levels of social capital, and higher penetrations of bank branches. Taking into account those moderators is important to fully harness the potential of broadband infrastructure on financial inclusion.

This paper constructs a rural speci¯c model to investigate how inequalitycan a®ect growth when moral hazard problem exists in credit markets. Banks rely on collateral, whereas the informal institutions directly yet costly monitor borrowers. Since both are unfavorable to certain segments of the agents,coexistence of these two could be growth enhancing. The dynamic rise and fall of them are implied. Further, the negative relationship between inequality and growth is discovered, using cross-province data in rural China. Interestingly,the policy dummy variable showing the attitude towards the informal institutions presents a positive sign, which supports our model empirically.