Proportion Of State-owned Enterprises Research Articles

Research and development efficiency, state-owned enterprises, and carbon intensity in China

This study investigates the effects and transmission mechanisms of research and development (R & D) efficiency and the proportion of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on carbon intensity using data from 30 Chinese provinces. The findings show that improving R & D efficiency can lower carbon intensity by promoting technological progress. However, more SOEs can increase carbon intensity by inhibiting technological progress. Thus, a higher proportion of SOEs can reduce the positive impact of R & D efficiency on decreasing carbon intensity. Additionally, the proportion of SOEs has a moderating effect that extends beyond provincial boundaries, resulting in spatial spillover due to strong interconnections between provinces. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this moderating effect is particularly pronounced in the central and western regions, as well as in the electricity sector. This variation is due to differences in economic development levels and government priorities. Given the characteristics of China’s carbon intensity, policymakers should shift from a one size fits all carbon reduction policy to prioritizing enhancing R & D efficiency, boosting the innovation capabilities of SOEs, and considering spatial linkages and regional disparities.

Digital Economy, Industry Heterogeneity, and Service Industry Resource Allocation

Based on the traditional framework of resource mismatch theory analysis and existing literature studies, this paper constructs a model of resource mismatch efficiency loss including the digitalization factor of the service industry, measures the resource mismatch of China’s service industry and its sub-sectors, and empirically analyzes the impact of digital economy development on resource mismatch of service industry using panel data of each sub-sector of China’s service industry from 2001 to 2020. The findings reveal that: (1) Resource mismatch exists in China’s service industry, and the degree of mismatch of capital is more serious than that of labor. (2) Traditional service industries with low digitalization have serious efficiency losses, while emerging service industries with high digitalization have almost no efficiency losses. (3) The increase in the development of the digital economy can significantly improve the resource mismatch in the service industry; appropriate government intervention can improve the capital mismatch but not the labor mismatch; the increase in the proportion of state-owned enterprises is conducive to improving the labor mismatch but not the capital mismatch. Meanwhile, the results of the industry heterogeneity test show that the increase in the digital economy can improve the resource mismatch of both emerging and traditional service industries, but the improvement is more obvious for emerging service industries. Therefore, in the context of the development of the digital economy, we make the following suggestions. The government intervenes appropriately in the capital market, develops emerging service industries, and formulates different digital transformation policies for different industries. Relevant enterprises increase their efforts in technology research and development, and actively explore the direction of digital transformation of service industries. The government and enterprises work together to promote the improvement of China’s economic development level.

How Officials' Competitive Pressure Affects Sustainable Development Capacity From a Spatial Perspective: Empirical Evidence From China.

The view of political achievements suggests that officials will prefer to implement measures that benefit their own development in order to seek promotions. In the past, GDP weighed heavily in officials’ appraisals, leading them to develop the economy without regard to sustainability. Now that the central government has incorporated environmental indicators into the officials’ appraisal system, will this lead officials to implement sustainable development strategies to the fullest extent? Are there spillover effects and regional heterogeneity in this role? This paper discusses these questions with the help of entropy method and a spatial Durbin model using data of 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2006 to 2016. The conclusions show that, firstly, the officials’ competitive pressure is beneficial to enhance the sustainable development capacity of the province, but this effect is only effective in western China. Secondly, there is no spillover effect of officials’ competitive pressure on sustainable development capacity; thirdly, foreign direct investment, the proportion of state-owned enterprises and environmental regulations have their own unique effects on sustainable development capacity, and there are spillover effects. Based on these findings, this paper proposes corresponding policy recommendations in terms of officials’ appraisal system, talent training, foreign investment introduction, and state-owned enterprise reform.

Industrial eco-efficiency and its determinants in China: A two-stage approach

China has undergone momentous changes and achieved remarkable economic progress since its economic reform and opening-up in 1978. However, the consequent resource depletion and environmental degradation have seriously restricted China’s potential for sustainable industrial development. As a practical tool contributing to sustainable development, the concept of eco-efficiency is considered increasingly important for reducing the trend of resource exhaustion and environmental degradation. This study first evaluated industrial eco-efficiency in 30 Chinese provinces during 2005–2015 using data envelopment analysis (DEA), and then identified the determinants of the resulting eco-efficiency scores using random-effects Tobit regression analysis. The DEA results showed that although China’s overall industrial eco-efficiency trend was upward, there were great disparities between provinces. Provinces with high industrial eco-efficiency were mainly distributed across the eastern region, while those in the often economically less developed western region had lower industrial eco-efficiency due to technological deficits and weak environmental policies. The Tobit regression results indicated that internal research and development expenditure in industrial enterprises, per capita gross regional product, and investment in wastewater treatment had positive effects on provincial industrial eco-efficiency. By contrast, the proportion of state-owned enterprises and investment in waste gas treatment had negative impacts. These findings provide valuable insights that can help provinces with low industrial eco-efficiency to pursue high-quality, green development.

Determining the factors driving China's industrial energy intensity: Evidence from technological innovation sources and structural change

The question of how to reduce energy intensity has been a hot issue of social concern. However, there is lack of detailed information from the perspective of technological innovation sources and structural change for policy consideration. To better understand the influence of different technological innovation sources and structural change on industrial energy intensity, this paper applies both linear and non-linear methods of empirical analysis. The conventional linear regression analysis suggests that indigenous research and development (R&D) exerts the most control on energy intensity reduction. Technology acquisitions, both domestically and internationally, have a significant impact on industrial energy intensity. Increases in the proportion of state-owned enterprises within industry and the expansion of the industrial sectors both have a negative effect on energy intensity reduction, but improving the entry level of foreign enterprises can reduce energy intensity. Further, a dynamic panel threshold model indicates that effects of different technological innovation sources and structural change on industrial energy intensity are nonlinear. These findings indicate that increasing R&D inputs and promoting coordinated development between different R&D activities, in addition to adjusting ownership structure, are of great significance for controlling industrial energy intensity.

Can embedding in global value chain drive green growth in China’s manufacturing industry?

Whether embedding in global value chain(GVC)can promote China’s manufacturing industry green growth is of great importance for China to accelerate the realization of green economy transformation and building of China’s high-quality modern ecological economic system. This paper analyzes the impact of embedding in GVC on China’s manufacturing industry green growth from perspectives of embedding position and embedding degree, using panel data from 17 manufacturing industries from 2000 to 2014. The study finds that during the inspection period, GVC embedding position and embedding degree of China’s manufacturing industry have a fluctuation and there is a large difference between industries, most industries are still in the downstream of GVC, and low-tech industries embedding in GVC to a deeper degree. In the meantime, China’s manufacturing industry green growth level has declined, and green growth situation is not optimistic. Dynamic panel results show that raising the GVC embedding position can significantly promote China’s manufacturing industry green growth. Further, threshold regression is used to find that when the embedding position crosses a certain threshold, the effect of increasing the GVC embedding degree on green growth changes from inhibition to promotion. And the effect of GVC embedding position and degree on China’s manufacturing industry green growth has significant industry heterogeneity. Finally, based on the research conclusions, concrete implications for promoting China’s manufacturing industry green growth are put forward: First, China should improve the GVC embedding position of manufacturing industry and enhance the value-added and control capabilities of the value chain. Second, China should increase the GVC high-end links embedding degree of manufacturing industry. While realizing value chain functional upgrading and chain upgrading, increase GVC embedding degree. Third, China should accelerate energy technology innovation, promote the development of new energy, and accelerate the transformation of energy consumption structure. Last of all, China should implement industry differentiation policies, enhance the overall competitiveness of the high-tech industry, and achieve the “essential” improvement of the GVC position of the low-tech industry. At the same time, for all industries, China must improve the level of environmental regulation, increase R&D investment, and reduce the proportion of coal consumption and the proportion of state-owned enterprises.

How do SOEs and FIEs affect POEs’ performance in emerging economies? Moderating effects of managerial ties

In emerging economies, informal ties are important instruments that firms use to overcome market competitiveness disadvantages. Higher proportions of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign-investment enterprises (FIEs) tend to hinder the performance of privately-owned enterprises (POE); from this foundation, this study investigates whether and how two forms of informal ties—managerial business and political ties—help POEs mitigate these negative effects. Findings from 717 listed POEs in China’s manufacturing sectors confirm that high proportions of SOEs and FIEs limit the POEs’ performance in the same industry. Business ties can mitigate the negative effect of SOEs; political ties weaken the detrimental effect of FIEs. However, business ties have limited capability to alleviate the negative effect of a high proportion of FIEs, and political ties cannot buffer the negative effect of a high proportion of SOEs. These findings thus specify ways that firms can leverage their informal ties to remedy their disadvantages in emerging economies.

Regulation in the Upstream Sector and Chinese Firm Export：The Position in the Vertical Production Supply Chain Matters

With the increasing export scale, the distribution of Chinese export industries has changed significantly. The overall export scale expansion is mainly led by the middle and downstream industries, while the upstream industry lacks obvious export advantages. At the same time, China’s overall market structure has also undergone significant changes, showing an asymmetric state of administrative monopoly in the upstream industry, market competition in the downstream industry”. Given the importance of input-output linkages between industries, China’s current market structure has motivated this study, namely, as market competition intensifies in the middle and downstream industries, does maintaining the administrative control in the upstream industry hinder the Chinese firm export? Based on the data of micro-enterprises from 1998 to 2013, this paper first estimates the production location of each industry from the perspective of vertical production supply chain, and defines the upstream administrative control based on the proportion of state-owned enterprises in the industry and the evolution trend. On this basis, based on the input-output relationship between industries, we measure the degree of the upstream administrative control that each industry faces, and then identify the impact on China’s firm export. In addition, this paper also tests the differences of its effects based on the enterprise ownership, trade pattern, industry competition degree and regional development. This paper finds that: Firstly, the upstream administrative control with state-owned enterprises does not include every industry, mainly referring to the capital-intensive industries such as coal mining washing and dressing industry, oil and natural gas mining industry, and the production and supply of electric power and heat. Secondly, with the continuous deepening of China’s market-oriented reform, the degree of the upstream administrative control decreased significantly from 1998 to 2007, but it was reversed and strengthened year by year from 2007 to 2013. Finally, since 2007, the enhancement of the upstream administrative control has significantly inhibited the export of Chinese manufacturing enterprises, and this negative impact is mainly reflected in private enterprises, ordinary trading firms, highly competitive industries and eastern regions. This paper has important policy implications: Firstly, we should lower the market entry regulation of the upstream regulated industry and the loan discrimination against non-state-owned enterprises, so as to enhance the market competition of the upstream administrative control industry. Secondly, the innovation incentive mechanism of the upstream regulated industry should be established to improve the technical content and product quality of upstream intermediate inputs, and the growth effect of export trade should be continued to exert. This paper contributes to the existing research mainly from two aspects: Firstly, the perspective based on the vertical production supply chain defines the scope of the administrative control in the upstream industry, and the indirect effects of input-output relation between industries are considered, which improves the measuring errors of the issue. Secondly, the evolution of the upstream administrative control degree is described by the Chinese industrial enterprise database from 1998 to 2013, which can evaluate the policy effects more accurately and make up for the deficiencies of the existing research.

Does Industrial Agglomeration Mitigate Fossil CO2 Emissions？An Empirical Study with Spatial Panel Regression Model

This paper investigates the factors influencing industrial carbon emissions. The primary aim is to find a solution to mitigate CO2 emissions from fossil combustion with rapid economic development and urbanization in coal principally consumed areas. The paper analyzes the effects of 7 factors on industrial carbon emissions and intensity in 18 cities in Henan Province from 2005 to 2015. The factors including energy structure, the index of industrial agglomeration, proportion of state-owned enterprises, proportion of collective enterprises, degree of industrialization, urbanization, foreign investment. The study establishes six panel models to analyze the influencing mechanism before and after the implementation policy on industrial clusters and carbon reduction. The results show that the carbon locking of energy structure has a path dependence. The increase of industrial agglomeration has a huge capacity of space spillover, which has broken the high carbon lock of coal to some extent. The degree of enterprise concentration to mitigate industrial carbon emissions needs to be improved. The inhibitory effect of foreign investment on carbon emissions has begun to highlight, but it has a certain policy directivity. Urbanization and industrialization have a phased impact on industrial carbon emission and emission intensity. The spatial interaction between industrial carbon emissions and its influencing factors provide new solutions to reduce carbon emissions.

Analysis of Influencing Factors of Change of Manufacturing Energy Intensity in China Based on WSR System Methodology and VAR Model

Since China’s reform and opening up, although energy intensity of manufacturing industry has showed a trend of decline overly, compared with developed countries, it remains high. The research object of this paper is energy intensity of manufacturing industry, based on Wuli–Shili-Renli system methodology, it builds factors system of energy intensity of manufacturing industry. Based on time series data from 1980 to 2014, it uses VAR model to explore influence law of various factors on manufacturing energy intensity. Impulse response analysis shows that in the short term, the whole society fixed asset investment structure, technological progress, economic development level and structure of property rights have a great influence on energy intensity. With the increase of technological progress rate, per capita GDP, proportion of state-owned enterprises, manufacturing energy intensity starts to reduce; with the increase of proportion of investment in fixed asset of energy intensive industries, manufacturing energy intensity starts to rise. In the long term, energy price, energy consumption structure, FDI and industry structure have a great influence on manufacturing energy intensity. With the increase of proportions of coal consumption and heavy industry, manufacturing energy intensity starts to rise; with the increase of energy price, manufacturing energy intensity starts to reduce. Variance decomposition shows that energy consumption structure, energy price and technological progress have a greater contribution to manufacturing energy intensity, optimizing energy consumption structure, controlling energy price and promoting technological progress are important approaches to reducing manufacturing energy intensity.

Different interaction mechanisms of market structure in the construction industry TFP from the spatial perspective: A case study in China

Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is a measure of long-term economic growth and a comprehensive industry-level productivity measure. China's construction industry exhibits a ladder-like distribution among the central, western and eastern regions and has low productivity. Using methods consisting of the DEA-Malmquist index, measurement for the market structure, and panel data model in accordance with the Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) paradigm, this study systematically analyzed the different interaction mechanisms of scale structure, ownership structure, industrial structure, and specialization structure of China's construction industry among the western, central and eastern regions over the past six years. It finds that the traditional SCP paradigm of the industrial economy is also applicable to the construction industry. The enterprise scale has a positive impact on the construction industry TFP of the entire country and the western region, while the proportion of state-owned enterprises has a negative influence on the construction industry TFP of the entire country and particularly the western area. Meanwhile, industrial structure has a positive effect on the construction industry TFP of the eastern area and a negative effect on that of the central area. Additionally, the proportion of general contractors on construction enterprises has a positive impact on the regional construction industry TFP. The research method presented in this study can be applied to other countries as well as to other industries, analyzing the interaction mechanisms of market structure in productivity from the spatial perspective. Therefore this study provides a systematic research methodology for the measurement of regional industry productivity and the identification of impact factors.

CEO succession and organizational transitions: case of state‐owned enterprises

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate CEO succession in China's state‐owned enterprises (SOE) from within intra‐industry labor market. One hypothesis looks at the proportion of SOEs in the industry which will be negatively associated with the likelihood of intra‐firm succession. Another proposition claims the performance gap between SOEs and the industry average level is positively related to the likelihood of intra‐firm succession.Design/methodology/approach – Secondary source data on 79 CEO successions and descriptive company measures were obtained. Background variables such as ROA and employee number were collected from the Tianjin Statistical Yearbook. Pearson and logistic regression coefficients provided tests of hypotheses.Findings – The hypotheses are strongly supported given all measures of performance. The likelihood of intra‐firm succession is negatively associated with the proportion of SOEs in a particular industry. The lower the performance of SOEs behind the industry average leve...

A healthy hybrid: The technological dynamism of minority-state-owned firms in China

Since its economic reform began in 1979 China's economy has grown rapidly but its dynamism has not been shared by the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at its core. Although some progress has been made, a large proportion of SOEs remain inefficient and uncompetitive, failing to exploit their advantages in scale, experience and resources. In contrast there has been rapid growth first of the collective and township enterprises, and then of the private sector, now the largest ownership type. However, private businesses continue to be handicapped by poor access to finance and other resources. These have however been made freely available to firms with only a minority state shareholding and otherwise owned by private shareholders and employees. This paper, focussing on the telecoms manufacturing sector, compares minority-state-owned hybrids favourably with other ownership types and argues that in the Chinese setting they can and should play a key role in future development.

China's SOE Reform and Technological Change: A Corporate Governance Perspective

Since the beginning of its economic reforms in 1979, China has been searching for an effective corporate governance system for its state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Although some progress has been made, a large proportion of SOEs remain inefficient and uncompetitive, and in general they have failed to exploit their advantages in scale, experience and resources. This paper argues that this is mainly due to poor corporate governance, in the broad sense of control relationships. The structure and culture of these relationships creates poor disciplinary and incentive mechanisms, and these not only cause poor management in a day-to-day sense, but distort technological development. Management has an incentive, in general, to avoid spending over the long term, and in particular to avoid investment with low visibility. We show how this tends to privilege the upgrading of technology in such a way that the enterprise remains dependent on external sources. We conclude with proposals to change the financial and corporate governance system to improve the situation.