农信社股份制改革对县域经济增长的影响研究

《财经研究》 2022年48卷第4期 页码：154 - 168  online：2022年3月31日

农信社股份制改革对县域经济增长的影响研究

Research on the Impact of Shareholding Reform of Rural Credit Cooperatives on County Economic Growth in China

作者（中）：孙希芳, 王晨晨

作者（英）：Sun Xifang, Wang Chenchen

作者单位：1.华南理工大学 经济与金融学院, 广东 广州 510006

摘要：2010年以来，我国农信社改革进入了全面股份制改革阶段，作为我国县域金融体系的主要组成部分，这一改革对县域经济增长的影响是一个有待探讨的重大理论和现实问题。文章利用历年收集的全国金融机构的金融许可证信息来识别全国范围内农信社改制进程，采用1549个县（市、旗）在2011—2018年期间的数据，基于双重差分模型系统评估了农信社股份制改革对县域经济增长的影响。研究结果表明，农信社股份制改革对县域经济增长具有显著的促进作用。其机制为农信社股份制改革能够抑制资金供给不足的县域的资金外流，促进县域资本积累和提升县域投资效率。地区异质性分析发现，在中部和西部地区农信社股份制改革促进了县域经济增长，而在东部地区则表现为“脱农离小”和加速县域资金外流。文章的研究拓展了对农信社改革绩效的研究，为我国正在进行的农信社改制工作和今后的政策调整提供了一定的决策依据，同时对新阶段县域经济的平衡充分发展具有重要政策含义。

关键词：农信社; 农村商业银行; 县域经济增长; 县域资金外流

Summary: Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs) have been playing a major role in the financial system in China’ s counties. After several rounds of experimental reform over the past three decades, RCCs have been undergoing a comprehensive shareholding reform since the end of 2010, in which RCCs leave the cooperative path and are transformed into shareholding Rural Commercial Banks (RCBs). This paper aims to investigate how the comprehensive shareholding reform of RCCs may impact upon county economic growth.Theoretically, the new reform with RCCs being transformed into shareholding RCBs may have both positive and negative effects on county economic growth. On the one hand, compared to RCCs which suffer serious agency problems, shareholding RCBs have a more efficient corporate governance structure. Therefore, RCBs have stronger incentives to improve their financial services to local customers and thus help to promote county economic growth. On the other hand, with stronger motives for profits, RCBs may deviate from their comparative advantages in serving small customers but rather prefer large firms within the county or even divert funds outside of the local economy, which will retard local economic growth. However, considering the related regulatory policies and the actual development status of county economy, we infer that the overall impact of RCC shareholding reform on county economic growth will be dominated by the positive effect. Then, this paper applies the DID model to a unique dataset to empirically study this issue. The results show that the new reform of RCCs has a significantly positive impact on county economic growth. The mechanism is that transforming RCCs into RCBs can effectively reduce fund outflows from counties with low fund supply, promote local capital accumulation, and improve investment efficiency. Further analysis shows the evidence of regional heterogeneity in the impact of the new reform of RCCs on county economic growth.This paper contributes to the literature on rural financial reform in China. Firstly, most of the literature discussing RCC reform usually focuses on the experimental reform of RCCs between 2003 and 2010, and there is little quantitative research analyzing the impact of the new shareholding reform of RCCs since 2010. This paper tries to fill this gap. Secondly, departed from previous studies which focus on the impact of RCC reform on RCCs themselves and their agricultural lending, this paper examines the impact of RCC shareholding reform on county economic growth. Thirdly, this paper uses unique banking branch data which enable us to identify the process of RCC shareholding reform across the whole country and obtain more general findings. Moreover, the results of this paper have important policy implications by providing empirical support for the ongoing shareholding reform of RCCs in China.

Key words: Rural Credit Cooperatives; Rural Commercial Banks; county economic growth; fund outflows from counties

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20211218.402

收稿日期：2021-6-6

基金项目：国家社会科学基金项目（18BJY155）

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