Optimal production efficiency of Chinese coal enterprises under the background of de-capacity—Investigation on the data of coal enterprises in Shandong Province

Abstract

Coal de-capacity has become an important goals of the Chinese government. However, the manner by which de-capacity is quantified to achieve the optimal scale for enterprises is rarely discussed. In this study, the technical efficiency of 157 coal mines in Shandong province and their influencing factors are evaluated. Moreover, the de-capacity scale and implementation strategy of coal mines are quantitatively analyzed. The empirical results are as follows. First, market regulation plays a major role in enterprise inefficiency, whereas policy regulation mainly affects highly efficient enterprises. For production enterprises in the middle of efficiency ranking (28.03%–77.07%), the policy regulation is more efficient than the market regulation. Second, the surplus service life, the labor force size, and the asset–liability rate of coal production enterprises are negatively correlated with efficiency, whereas design capacity and capacity utilization rate are positively correlated with efficiency. Finally, the total de-capacity of coal mines with the production scale of 0.3–0.9 million tons in Shandong reach the optimal scale in 2016, whereas the de-capacity intensity of production mines with production scales more than 0.9 million tons must be strengthened.