Does the type of investor matter? An analysis of fixed-asset investments in rural China

Abstract

There are two major types of investors of rural fixed-asset investments (FAIs) in China: collective FAIs and private FAIs. To analyze the effect of investors of different types on the efficiency of rural FAIs, we apply a two-regime spatial Durbin model (SDM) based on panel data from 1993 to 2012 in China. Our major findings include: (1) rural FAIs promote the rural economy, which shows positive spatial interdependence and the spatial effects differ across regions; (2) the investment efficiency of collective FAIs is weaker than that of private FAIs and decreases over time; and (3) rural private FAIs present significantly positive spatial spillover effects on rural economies, whereas rural collective FAIs show negative spatial spillover effects in the first-decade (1993–2002) sub-sample and no significant spatial spillover effect in the second-decade (2003–2012) sub-sample. Policy implications are proposed accordingly.