A Study On Individual Credit System In China

This article takes the new classical economy as the theoretical basis. Starting from the "rational people" hypothesis, trough a series of analyses, the author draws a conclusion: Under the condition of market economy, all economic main bodies are "rational people" who are chasing for the maximization of their own preferences. It is not efficient to solve the problem of lack of honest and credit in China only with the inane moral sermon. The only solution is to redesign the comparison between the costs of keeping faith and breaking faith or the comparison between the gains from keeping faith and breaking faith with certain institutional arrangements to make them keep faith on their own initiatives. One of institutional arrangements is individual credit system.This article is made up of four parts:The first part provides the analytic frame for the whole article. It mainly comprises of defining the credit with pertinence, discussing the characteristics of the credit, the summary of the individual credit system, the condition of efficiency of the credit system, the analysis of the action of breaking faith and related regulations. The condition of efficiency of the credit system is the core part because it provides theoretic support to the countermeasure part of the article to make it have a definite object in view and more realistically meaningful. The condition of efficiency of the credit system concretely includes: first, the trade must continue with high probability; second, parties must be patient; third, the action of breaking faith can be observed in time; forth, parties must have sufficient initiative and possibility to punish the counter-party's cheat. From the point of view, the credit system is actually a mechanism that makes the traders resist the temptation of short-term benefits from the opportunism actions for the long-term benefits from trade. The author divides the action of breaking faith into "hidden knowledge" and "hidden action" with the theory of information economy. The regulative related measures are also put forth, i.e. "signal transmission mechanism" for "hidden knowledge" and "credit inspiring mechanism" for "hidden action".The second part of the article introduces the actuality and problems of individual credit system in China. Although certain progresses have been made, there are many problems in the individual credit system in China. These problems includes: low degree of marketization of credit intermediary services; lack of unified standard of credit rating; low degree of opening of credit data market, lack of normal access to individual information; imperfect national credit management system, lack of efficient punishing mechanism towards the action of breaking faith.The third part concentrates on the research of foreign experience that is used as reference for China. In west developed countries, the national credit managementsystem played a very important role in normalizing the credit trade. It is made up of opening credit rating data and the development of credit management industry, establishing and enforcing of credit management law system, supervising and managing over credit trade and credit management industry by government, developing of the education and research on credit management. And the operating mechanism of individual credit systems of foreign countries is perfecting with the support of credit management system. Its content is getting richer and richer, including: the individual credit record booking system, the individual credit rating system, the individual credit risk forecasting mechanism, the individual credit risk managing system and the individual credit risk imputing mechanism. The foreign experience enlightens us that: first, high attention must be paid on the establishment and perfection of the individual credit system; second, related legislation according to China must be made as quick as possible; third, the source of the credit data must be opened to quicken the development of the market for credit rating; forth, institutional structur...