China as a Developmental State

John Knight

No 2012-13, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: The paper examines the notion of a ‘developmental state’ and shows that China possesses the characteristics of a developmental state. It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China and in some other economies. It analyses the methods and mechanisms that were introduced to create a developmental state, in particular the incentive structures that the leadership used to solve the principal-agent problem. These include personnel policies, fiscal decentralization, and patronage relationships. That leads to a review of its successes, limitations and adverse consequences, and to the question: can China’s developmental state be sustained? Conclusions are drawn for both China and other developing countries.

Keywords: China; Developmental state; Economic growth; Incentives; Principal-agent problem; Virtuous circle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 E02 O10 O53 P16 P26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-pbe and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:70f4bfce-d560-4985-a6d7-667c8aeb8618 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: China as a Developmental State (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2012-13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Coffey ().