This paper describes the process of privatization of China's Township Enterprises. Findings from a recent field survey by the authors show how far privatization has proceeded and how it has affected firm performance. The pervasiveness and impact of privatization are readily apparent. The...

Many educational systems have struggled with the question about how best to give out financial aid. In particular, if students do not know the amount of financial aid that they can receive before they make a decision about where to go to college and what major to study, it may distort their...

This paper studies insider privatization in transition economies. We show theoretically that the underperformance of insider-privatized firms could be due to the manager-cum-owner's lack of incentives after privatization. A screening theory predicts that a firm's postprivatization incentives...

This paper seeks to evaluate effects of micro-credit projects on the poor. We utilize data that we collected in Sichuan Province in 1999 to investigate whether micro-credit projects have targeted the poor and whether participation in the micro-credit project increases the likelihood of migration...

This paper, using unique survey data from the banking industry in rural China, investigates the effect of incentive contracts on performance. In the context of China's economic transition, we find that the incentive contracts have a positive effect on the bank manager's performance in deposit...