Social Capital, Finance, and Consumption Evidence from a Representative Sample of Chinese Households

Using a new, nationally representative sample of Chinese households, this paper studies how social capital affects access to credit and its implications for consumption levels. The paper focuses on two specific forms of social capital: private social networks and membership in the Communist Party. A...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cull, Robert
Other Authors: Gan, Li, Xu, Lixin Colin, Gao, Nan
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2016
Series:World Bank E-Library Archive
Online Access:
Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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520 |a Using a new, nationally representative sample of Chinese households, this paper studies how social capital affects access to credit and its implications for consumption levels. The paper focuses on two specific forms of social capital: private social networks and membership in the Communist Party. Although party affiliation is linked to higher consumption in rural areas, those benefits are direct and thus do not work through credit markets. The main finding is a strong link between private social networks, use of informal credit, and household consumption. Instrumental variable regressions indicate that the link is causal. However, the study finds no evidence that social capital has facilitated formal credit market development in China, as it has in countries with higher levels of private sector development