Financial inclusion, land title and credit: evidence from China
China Agricultural Economic Review
ISSN: 1756-137X
Article publication date: 24 January 2020
Issue publication date: 11 June 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study land title’s credit effect from a financial inclusion perspective in China. The focus is both small land holding and poor farmers. Formal and informal finances are considered to test their differences in land title’s credit effect.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use augmented inverse-probability weights of the doubly robust method to test the effect of land titling on the rural credit market by addressing self-selection, endogeneity and heterogeneity concerns.
Findings
Results show that the poor, non-poor and small land holders with land titles are willing to borrow more from formal financial institutions. Land titling increases loan accessibility for non-poor and small land holding farmers. As for informal financing, large land holding and non-poor farmers show a decrease in informal lending. Land titling has a financial inclusion effect for some farmers, but poor farmers’ credit restrictions are not entirely solved by land titling.
Originality/value
This is the first study that focuses on the financial inclusion effect of farm land titling in China.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper was partially funded by National Social Science Fund of China (No. 19FGLB052), 13th Five-Year Planing of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Guangdong Province (GD17XYJ10), USDA Hatch/Multi State Project Grant No. LAB94358; Key Project of National Natural Science Fund of China (71333004); Key Policy Research Project of National Natural Science Fund of China (71742003), and National Social Science Fund of China (No. 19ZDA115). Senior authorship is equally shared by Jiang and Paudel.
Citation
Jiang, M., Paudel, K.P., Peng, D. and Mi, Y. (2020), "Financial inclusion, land title and credit: evidence from China", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 257-273. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-01-2019-0020
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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