Un)Responsiveness to Microfinance: Evidence from Chinese Poverty Reduction Practices

15:30-17:00, Friday, October 23, 2020

Tencent Meeting (Meeting ID: 646 153 394)

Dr. Jing ZHANG, is now an associate professor at the School of Finance, Renmin University of China. Dr. ZHANG obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from University of Maryland in 2011. Her research interests are Public Finance, Health Economics and Environmental Economics. Her works have appeared in Journal of Development Economics, China Economic Review and Journal of Health Economics, among others.

The extraordinary achievement of Chinese poverty reduction practice has been well acknowledged. Meanwhile, in these practices throughout the world, microfinance, as the most widely adopted policy tool, has recently been documented to generate almost nil impacts, a frustrating puzzle for both the academia and policy practitioners. By employing the micro-level data of Chinese households from 2005 to 2010, we investigate the effects of poverty fund injection on incomes and expenditures. The empirical results show that the increased income observed afterwards mainly comes from the fund itself, rather than any increases in households'  business and/or labor income. After exploring the quantities produced of 122 agricultural products, we find that the little increase in agricultural production as well.

For more information of the seminar, scan the following QR code(s) to join Tencent QQ group (904 544 292) or WeChat group named "IAER Seminar (2)", please.

QQ Group

WeChat Group (Valid until 10/26/2020)