Making State Investment Work in Rural China: The Economic and Political Logic in Local Anti-Poverty Programs

• Main Author: Zhou, Haoyue
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: Chinese
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Economics; Public administration
• ISBN: 9781392341483; 1392341485

In developing countries where poverty constituted a political concern, the state might can adopt a principal-agent model and top-down financial transfers to promote redistributive initiatives. However, without strong incentive mechanism and monitoring capacity, the central principal has difficulties in controlling local agents, who might may not implement anti-poverty policies according to the state’s redistributive goals. In comparison, the large scale of rural poverty reduction in China during the Anti-poverty Campaign initiated in 2015 has constituted an intriguing empirical question about how the Chinese state ensures effective policy implementation. This dissertation argues that current institutions could can reach an equilibrium balance between the central control and local discretion, through which the central authorities maintained ultimate control over anti-poverty agendas, while the local agents utilized economic and political strategies to optimize enhance redistributive efficiency in rural areas.