Summary:
China's rural financial reform has effectively been a top-down storage reform. Before 1990, traditional rural financial institutions (TRIs, including rural credit cooperatives, rural cooperative banks and rural commercial banks) fulfilled a large number of urban construction roles. Following the implementation of China's commercialization and market-oriented reforms, TRIs have preferred to serve urban residents and large and medium-sized enterprises with the goal of making profits. As a result, more financial institutions that originate from rural economies and actively serve rural residents are needed to increase the supply of rural financial services. In 2006, China introduced an innovative reform that encouraged industrial and private capital to invest in new rural financial institutions (NRIs, including village banks, loan companies and rural mutual fund cooperatives). However, the question remains as to whether, under this incremental reform, NRIs are easing financing constraints in rural areas and reducing the urban-rural income gap. This paper conducts theoretical and empirical studies on NRIs and TRIs. We use the evolutionary game model to examine the results of competition between the two types of rural financial institutions and show, using the income model, that they change the urban-rural income gap by changing the availability of resident loans. In the empirical part, this paper first builds a dynamic panel GMM model using county macroeconomic data and financial institution branch data from 2000 to 2018. The financial institution branch data come from the disclosure of financial license information on the official website of the CBRC, which contains the branch information of more than 200,000 financial institutions in China since 1949 (including address, date of establishment and revocation information). Based on these data, we construct a proportion indicator of rural financial institution branches to explore the different effects of NRIs and TRIs on the income gaps of urban and rural residents. We then use the 2018 China Household Income Survey data (CHIP2018) provided by the China Institute of Income Distribution to build loan availability indexes for urban and rural residents. We use these indexes to test the mediating effects of the loan availability of urban and rural residents on the impact of the increase in rural financial institutions on the income gap. Our theoretical analysis shows that due to the existence of soft information screening costs and compliance costs, the two types of financial institutions clearly choose to serve customers in different areas. This heterogeneity contributes to the urban-rural income gap, in which the loan availability of residents exerts a mediating effect. Our empirical study also shows that the increase in NRIs has significantly reduced the urban-rural income gap, while the increase in TRIs has widened the gap. Our analysis of the mediating effect shows that the expansion of the two types of rural financial institutions has heterogeneous effects on the loan availability of rural residents and urban residents. Specifically, NRIs improve the loan availability of rural residents, while TRIs reduce it, thus changing the urban-rural income gap. Overall, our results indicate that the incremental reform of the rural financial market has been more beneficial than the storage reform. However, further reform is needed to reduce the difficulty of market access and strengthen the supervision of the cash flows of NRIs. Moreover, TRIs should be encouraged to increase their investment in microcredit technologies and reduce the difficulty of identifying rural customer risks. Efforts should also be made to enable the human resource advantages of NRIs and the technical advantages of TRIs to jointly serve the rural financial market. According to our proposed new classified supervision model, financial institutions should be able to choose their own regulatory framework and encouraged to build on their strengths and circumvent their weaknesses, and constantly increase their investment in areas where they have comparative advantages. These new institutions, technologies and regulations will help accelerate the establishment of a widely dispersed, multi-level and differentiated banking system in China. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the heterogeneous effects of the expansion of two types of rural financial institutions from an intermediate and micro perspective on the evolution of credit constraints and confirming that improving credit constraints has a positive effect on rural residents' incomes. Specifically, we first provide a theoretical basis for formulating policy recommendations by establishing a theoretical model with which to discuss the mechanism of the two types of rural financial institutions in changing the urban-rural income gap by serving different customers. Second, we use county-level data to test the effects of the development of rural financial institutions on changes in loan availability and income. We also reveal more details about the development of NRIs and use micro survey data to confirm the mediating effect of improving credit constraints. Finally, we show that NRIs have better effects in supporting villagers and small businesses. In contrast, as the credit supply of TRIs favors lower risk, TRIs have a better effect on urban residents' credit.
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