Corporate Law, Government Intervention and Corporate Ownership Structure

Abstract

Abstract We compare the influence of legal and political factors on the corporate ownership structure of Chinese listed companies. We find that: (1) the improvement of corporate law quality and the less government intervene on firms lead to a decrease in corporate ownership concentration; (2) compared with the provincial corporate law performance, the effects of the provincial government intervention on the concentration of ownership is relatively significant; (3) the impact of government intervention on corporate ownership structure of state-owned firms are larger than that of private firms, whereas the impact of provincial corporate law implementation performance is more significant in samples of private firms. The policy implications are that most China’s SOE reform measures have yet not cure the crux. The success of the reform may primarily depends on the re-examination and restructure of the political institutions.