China's Changing Financial System: Can It Catch Up With, or Even Drive Growth
NFI’s Policy Brief Series

Networks Financial Institute released a Policy Brief analyzing China’s financial system and its effect on economic growth. NFI’s Policy Brief No. 2007-PB-05, "China's Changing Financial System: Can It Catch Up With, or Even Drive Growth," was written by James R. Barth, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance at Auburn University and Senior Finance Fellow at the Milken Institute, and Gerard Caprio, Jr., a Professor of Economics and Chair of the Center for Development Economics at Williams College and presented at a conference with the same name on January 28, 2007 in Indianapolis. NFI periodically issues Policy Briefs on emerging issues facing the financial services industry; these papers represent individual views and are not official statements of Networks Financial Institute.

Throughout the past three decades of fast growth, China has undergone tremendous structural changes in its economy. There has been significant and continuing industrialization, urbanization and integration into the world economy. The financial system has also undergone major changes, with the People's Bank of China (PBOC) ending its monopoly of the banking sector and being recast as the nation's central bank in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The purpose of Professor Barth and Caprio’s paper is to examine in some detail China's changing financial system so as to assess whether it can catch up with, or even drive economic growth.

The paper is available on the NFI’s web site, http://www.networksfinancialinstitute.org/ The file is available for downloading in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format at http://www.networksfinancialinstitute.org/pdfs/profiles/2007-PB-05_Barth-Caprio.pdf.

Research department contact: Martha H. McCormick at martha.mccormick@isunetworks.org