Economic and institutional reform packages and their impact on productivity: A case study of Chinese township and village enterprises

Soft budget constraints in China: Evidence from the Guangdong hospital industry

“…Numerous empirical studies have found evidence of soft budget constraints among China's industrial and financial firms, differing by sector, ownership, and over time (Wong 1986;Qian and Roland 1996;Xu 1997;Brandt and Zhu 2001;Li 2003;Ito 2006;Li 2008). In this paper, we contribute to that literature by providing preliminary evidence regarding soft budget constraints in another important sector of China's transitional economy: hospitals.…”

“…For studies of soft budget constraints in the industrial and financial sectors of China, see for exampleWong (1986),Qian and Roland (1996),Xu (1997),Brandt and Zhu (2001),Li (2003),Ito (2006) andLi (2008). 2 SeeEggleston et al (2009) andEggleston et al (forthcoming).…”

The Chinese mafia: private protection in a socialist market economy

“…According to Ito, there might be two most fundamental factors that drove local cadres to hand over the ownership to private individuals: (1) profit rates of TVEs declined from 1984 to the end of 1990s, which increased 'fiscal burdens for local governments due to subsidisation and tax exemptions'; (2) tax reform in 1994 established the Tax Sharing System, which made 'collective assets became liable to state-controlled taxation'. 69 It can be argued that the desire for more revenue seems more important than forms of ownership for both national and local governments. 70 A series of disadvantages provided an enormous impetus for local cadres to recalculate local interests.…”

The 1994 Tax Reform and Its Impact on China's Rural Fiscal Structure

“…The rural Gini continued to rise in the 1990s. When the Chinese economy turned from shortage to surplus, township and village enterprises (TVE) in the hinterland lost out in the intensifying and increasingly zerosum competition with their counterparts in coastal provinces, which continued to thrive thanks to a variety of advantages and successful developmental strategies (Kung and Lin, 2007;Ito, 2006;Whiting, 2001;Walder, 1995). Many of the former were forced out of business or moved to cities, thereby further depleting the counties' tax base.…”