A number of empirical studies on the Chinese enterprise reform have identified the ownership effect on managerial performance. Somewhat surprisingly, although many of these, explicitly or implicitly, assume the difference in managerial targets (motives) by ownership type, for example state-owned enterprises have weaker profit motives than other type enterprises, few studies empirically tested the validity of this assumption. Using a unique data set on the Chinese enterprises, this paper investigates the relationship between ownership types and managerial targets. The data, that are collected by Chinese Academy of Social Science include the manager’s answers on the priority among managerial targets: value-added maximization, sales maximization, profit maximization, scale expansion, employee’s income/welfare maximization. With respect to ownership we regrouped original ten types into the following four types: Traditional enterprises (state-owned, urban collective-owned and joint-operation), Rural collective-owned enterprises, Joint stock companies (limited liability corporations, share-holding corporations ltd. and　share-holding partnership enterprises) and Private enterprises (private, partnership and foreign funded). In logit model the dependent variable is binomial that equals 1 if the most prior target is profit maximization, 0 otherwise. Main explanatory variables are three ownership type dummies, Rural collective-owned, Joint stock and Private (default is Traditional). The estimation result is contrary to expectation, none of these three ownership dummies has significant coefficient. Any ownership effect is not identified. The other factors, sales volume and manager’s working years influence to the choice of managerial targets. Some supplemental analyses are attempted to confirm the robustness of this result. Estimating the model that includes new explanatory variable, the share of public-owned capital, in place of ownership dummies, the coefficient of this continuous variable is not significant. All of multivariate logit model, ordered logit model and principal component analysis also basically lead the same conclusion, i.e. no ownership effects to managerial targets.

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The aim of this paper is to study an impact of education on socio-economic status and demand for education in rural China, based on our sample survey, which was carried on in September-October 2003 in several villages in Zhejiang Province. We selected randomly 1,002 students in elementary and junior high schools and made surveys for their parents about their education career and present economic status, and attitudes for education of their children. Estimating a relation of income to educational career, we got the rate of return to education(3.2～4.1%). Combining this figure with estimates by other authors, we argued that the rate of return has been almost constant in rural China since the end of the 1980s and is smaller than the rate for urban areas. Parents have strong demand for education of children; that is, they realize higher education is needed for getting better jobs and higher income. Education expenditure was much larger for higher educated parents than for less educated parents, but a ratio of this item in total family expenditure was rather higher for less educated and lower income parents. This implies that the latter group of parents is forced to raise educational expenses by saving on other items.

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