Cooperative Membership andRural Households’ Credit Accessibility : A Perspective on the Quality of Cooperatives
WANG Jianfeng, NI Dandan, WANG Aoran, MA Taichao
China School of Banking and Finance, University of International Business and Economics; Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Summary:
Rural households are the backbone of agricultural production. Improving their access to formal agricultural credit and addressing their financing difficulties are crucial for advancing agricultural modernization, revitalizing rural areas, and ensuring national food security. Credit accessibility for rural households is shaped by the development of the financial system, along with institutional and organizational factors in the agricultural and rural economy. As a major agricultural nation, China has recently implemented various financial reforms to ease rural households' financing difficulties. These include both targeted measures addressing specific issues and broader policies offering comprehensive solutions. Despite these efforts, challenges persist, with the issues inherent in agricultural and rural areas limiting rural households' credit accessibility. In the future, enhancing rural households' access to formal agricultural credit will require reforms of influential institutions and organizations in agriculture and rural areas. Cooperatives are one such organization. Using data from the China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS) database, this paper studies how cooperative membership influences rural households' access to formal agricultural credit. The empirical results show that while joining cooperatives improves rural households' access to formal agricultural credit, the effect is weaker than expected based on both theoretical analysis and international experiences. Our results remain after mitigating endogeneity issues using propensity score matching (PSM), instrumental variables, and a series of other robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that cooperative membership affects rural households' access to credit through at least three channels: improving rural households' income levels, strengthening their creditworthiness, and increasing their preference for formal credit. We also analyze why the effect is weaker than expected. The results show that the quality of cooperatives is a key factor that limits the cooperatives' efficiency in improving rural households' credit accessibility. Both a low degree of cooperation and poor cooperation performance hinder the positive effect of cooperatives on rural households' credit accessibility. We also examine external factors that could strengthen the credit enhancement effect of cooperatives. Empirical results suggest that expanding the scale of per rural household's farmland, developing high-standard farmland, and improving digital infrastructure enhance cooperatives' credit enhancement effect. Our contributions are fourfold. First, previous studies either lack generalizable evidence of nationwide cooperative practices or focus on the effect of “the presence of cooperatives in a village”. Using representative data from Chinese rural households, our paper examines the direct impact of cooperative membership on rural households' access to formal agricultural credit and provides a more comprehensive assessment of their relationship. Second, previous studies usually assume the quality of cooperatives is homogeneous, neglecting the variation in practice. Our paper examines how the uneven quality of cooperatives limits their effectiveness in improving rural households' access to formal agricultural credit. Furthermore, we extend the analysis by focusing on two key aspects: the degree of cooperation and cooperation performance. By highlighting how insufficient development of cooperatives constrains their credit enhancement effect, this paper addresses a gap in existing literature. We also examine the influence of three external factors in improving the credit enhancement effect of cooperatives, namely, the scale of farmland per rural household, the construction of high-standard farmland, and the construction of digital infrastructure. These findings offer a deeper understanding of how to mitigate rural households' financing difficulties. Our results indicate that rural households' credit accessibility depends not only on the financial system but also on the agricultural and rural economy. Addressing rural households' financing challenges requires a comprehensive strategy that includes developing agriculture-related organizations and improving the quality of the agricultural and rural real economy. Third, rural households' access to credit is influenced by both supply-side-and demand-side factors. While previous studies often focus solely on the supply side, our paper examines both sides by analyzing how cooperative membership affects households' credit accessibility by improving their income levels, creditworthiness, and preference for formal credit. Our findings provide nuanced evidence of the relationship between cooperatives and formal credit access for rural households, helping policymakers design targeted policies to better leverage cooperatives in addressing rural households' financing difficulties. Finally, given that China is a major agricultural nation, theoretical and empirical findings on Chinese cooperatives form valuable insights for agricultural and rural development in other developing countries.
王剑锋, 倪丹丹, 王骜然, 马太超. 加入合作社与农户信贷可得性——基于合作社发展质量的分析[J]. 金融研究, 2024, 530(8): 169-187.
WANG Jianfeng, NI Dandan, WANG Aoran, MA Taichao. Cooperative Membership andRural Households’ Credit Accessibility : A Perspective on the Quality of Cooperatives. Journal of Financial Research, 2024, 530(8): 169-187.
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