Using a new and representative data set of Chinese household finance, this paper documents household access to and costs of finance, along with their correlates. As in most developing countries, informal finance is a crucial element of household finance, and wealth tends to be associated with...

We describe features of the Chinese financial system that inhibited effective financial intermediation from 1980 to 1994 and investigate whether, despite these impediments, bank finance flowed to state-owned enterprises with higher subsequent productivity than did direct government transfers. We...

Using a sample of Chinese state-owned enterprises spanning 1980 to 1994, we investigate the factors that determine the sources of finance for firm-level fixed investment, including retained earnings, bank finance, and government transfers. Direct government transfers were not significantly...

This paper uses data from a large survey of Chinese firms to investigate whether local government efforts to facilitate market development improve firm efficiency. Both government provision of information about products, markets, and innovation and government assistance in arranging loans are...

This paper examines the role of firms' government connections, defined by government intervention in the appointments of Chief Executive Officers and the status of state ownership, in determining the severity of financial constraints faced by Chinese firms. In line with the previous literature,...

This paper combines firm-level data from 89 countries with updated country-level data on financial structure, and uses two estimation approaches. It finds that in low-income countries, labor growth is swifter in countries with a higher level of private credit/gross domestic product; the positive...

Johnson, McMillan and Woodruff (2002) examine the relative importance of property rights and external finance in several Eastern European countries, and find property rights to be overwhelmingly important, while external finance explains very little of firm reinvestment. McMillan and Woodruff...