The paper examines trends and drivers for regional specialization of China’s agricultural produc-tion for 2003-2011. We apply the Regional Specialization Index to a data set of commodities that covers 70 percent of China’s crop and livestock production. Actual prices at the provincial level...

Credit markets are an essential economic institution. In developing countries, particularly in countries undergoing rapid social and economic transition, it is important to identify emerging credit demand and institute credit supply in a timely manner to facilitate economic transformation. This...

Chinese rural household has been always facing credit constraints. Few institutions lend loans to farmers because of financial risks. Farmers have to use usury or other informal sources to meet the financial needs for production. This credit constraint has been forcing farmers to deviate from...

This study employed data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the comparative efficiency performance of selected commercial banks, rural financial institutions and microfinance institutions in China. The first pairwise comparison indicated that commercial banks achieved higher level of overall...

Informal credit markets are very active in many developing countries including China. Informal financial associations have become a major channel of borrowing. Using data from the 2006 Rural Household Survey, this paper investigates farmers’ borrowings from both formal and informal sources...

Begins by considering trends in the incidence of rural poverty in China, comparing China and India. Although the incidence of rural poverty in China declined generally, such poverty is still a matter for concern, especially now that China has joined the WTO. There is concern about the possible...

This paper focuses on factors influencing grassland lease, which will contribute to the heated debate about land use in China by extending to more extensive and vulnerable grassland regions. Based on review of grassland institutional change and analysis of data from 12 villages, this paper...

Research on agricultural development in China has increasingly paid attention to the potentially negative effects of highly fragmented farm structures. This study provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the linkages between land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply and investigates...

The price variability of agricultural commodities reached record levels in 2008, and again more recently in 2010, raising concerns about this increased price volatility would be temporal or structural. The Chinese soybean futures market is the second largest in the world, after the CME group, in...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the farm and rural credit system in China. To do this the authors use the so-called “7 Cs” of credit (these include: Credit, Character, Capacity, Capital, Condition, Capability, and Collateral) and for each “C” provide...