New SSCI Paper published by Chengfang Liu, Linxiu Zhang, Jikun Huang, Renfu Luo, Hongmei Yi, and their coauthors

Release date：2013/7/4　　Source： ccap

Title: Project Design, Village Governance and Infrastructure Quality in Rural China

Citation: Liu, Chengfang, Linxiu Zhang, Jikun Huang, Renfu Luo, Hongmei Yi, Yaojiang Shi, Scott Rozelle. 2013. Project Design, Village Governance and Infrastructure Quality in Rural China. China Agricultural Economic Review. Vol. 5, No. 2, 2013, pp. 248-280.

Abstract

Purpose: The paper aims to measure the quality of infrastructure investments in rural China as well as to document the differences among projects and among villages in order to try to understand why the quality of infrastructure investments differs across space.

Design/methodology/approach: Using primary data collected by the authors on three main types of infrastructure projects in rural China, the paper created measures of project quality to understand how quality varies across space. Moreover, we used both descriptive and multivariate approaches to examine whether the quality of infrastructure projects is correlated with project design attributes and governance factors in rural China.

Findings: This paper finds that a.) between-project within-village quality differences are small and project design has little explanatory power; b.) between-village variations are larger; and c.) there are strong correlations between the ways villages govern themselves and project quality. We conclude that it is difficult to make good projects work in communities that lack of good governance, and that there is something at the village level that is making some projects succeed in some villages, but not in others.

Originality/value: Disaggregated data on the quality of infrastructure (and its determinants) data was collected by the authors to allow for variation in the type of infrastructure projects (roads, irrigation, and drinking water) and variation in village governance, making it possible to identify and contrast the effects of project design and village governance factors on project quality.

JEL classification: H41; H54; H71

Keywords: Quality; Project; Village; Infrastructure; Rural China