UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HOUSEHOLD ACCESS TO INFORMAL RURAL CREDIT: AN ANALYSIS FROM VHLSS 2008 By LE ANH THU MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, August 2012 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HOUSEHOLD ACCESS TO INFORMAL RURAL CREDIT: AN ANALYSIS FROM VHLSS 2008 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By LE ANH THU Academic supervisor: Dr. LE VAN CHON HO CHI MINH CITY, August 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not have been accomplished without the kind assistance and enthusiastic guidance of several individuals who have in one way or another contributed toward to the formation and fulfillment of this paper. First of all, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to Dr. Nguyen Trong Hoai and Dr.
Pham Khanh Nam for sharing their practical profound insights and steadfast encouragement in term of theoretical literature and techniques that are helpful to this study. I would like to express my special thanks to Dr. Tran Tien Khai and Dr. Ha Thuc Vien who have inspired initiatives and passion of rural credit in me to carry out this interesting study.
I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to Dr. Le Van Chon for his scientific guidance, patient encouragement and invaluable advice, which he has provided throughout the time of preparation and accomplishment of this paper. I sincerely would like to thank all my loved classmates in class MDE17 and staff in the VNP office, who always give me their restless assistance when I was in trouble; especially Nguyen Thi Thuy Thanh, Dinh Thi Thu and Phan Thach Truc for creating motivation for me due to their brilliant talent. I would like to express my special massive thanks to my bosses MA.
Nguyen Duc The and Mrs. Van Thi Le who have given me opportunities and spiritual assistance to accomplish this study. Last but not least, I must express my most gratitude to my parents and my wife, Bui Thi Thanh Thuy, for their enduring understanding and spiritual assistance which help me overcome the hard times. [i] ABSTRACT It is said that credit is the essential source to finance production and consumption expenditures in rural provinces in Vietnam.
It also plays a critical role in poverty alleviation, livelihood diversification and in reducing household vulnerability. Although credit contributes substantially to the rural development, household access to credit sources has not been given proper attention. The purpose of this paper is to examine household access to informal financial markets in Vietnamese rural areas. It applies the theoretical framework of asymmetric information to investigate the rural credit markets in Vietnam.
This paper explores determinants that influence loan amounts borrowed by rural households from the informal sources using the Heckman two-step model and the data in the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey which was carried out in the year 2008. It is found that household expenditure, household assets and number of working earners strongly and positively impacts on probability of credit access; gender of household head highly negatively influence credit accessibility. Notwithstanding, informal loan appears almost in household’s activities for both consumption and production purposes, they still mainly rely on relationship of friends and relatives rather than fully make use of informal credit institutions and other sources. Key words: Informal rural credit; cross section; Heckman model; VHLSS 2008; Vietnam [ ii ] TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.4 Justification of the thesis .5 Organization of the thesis. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 History and origin of the rural credit .2 Theoretical review of rural credit markets .1 The theory of monopoly .3 Indirect screening mechanism .4 Direct screening mechanism. 22 CHAPTER 3: DATA AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .1 Background of rural credit markets in Vietnam. 32 CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS RESULTS .1 Rural credit markets .2 Intention of loans.3 Different loan amounts analysis .4 Descriptive statistical analyses .