Anonymous Banking and Financial Repression

Chong-En Bai, David Li, Yingyi Qian and Yijiang Wang

No 2221, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: China’s economic performance of the past two decades presents a puzzle for the economics of transition and development: Enormous private business incentives were unleashed that have fuelled rapid economic growth despite the fact that China has had very weak ‘conventional institutions’ (such as the rule of law and separation of powers) to constrain the government from arbitrary intrusion into economic activities. We argue that one mechanism that has limited the government's ability for predation and harassment is commitment through information decentralization, where the key institution is ‘anonymous banking’, that is, a combination of the use of cash for transactions and the use of anonymous savings deposits. Meanwhile, the government has benefited from the improved private incentives by collecting quasi-fiscal revenues from the state banking system through ‘financial repression,’ a combination of controls on international capital flows with restrictions on domestic interest rates. We show that the major features of China's economy concerning its fiscal decline, financial deepening and the sectoral dual-track can be better understood using this analytical framework.

Keywords: Financial repression; Government commitment; Government in transition; state predation; information decentralization; anonymous banking; sectoral dual-track (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G28 H2 O16 O17 P26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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