IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/ecopln/v37y2004i1p47-68.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Puzzle of Firm Performance in China: An Institutional Explanation

Author

Listed:
  • Shaomin Li

Abstract

China has achieved phenomenal economic growth in an institutional environment that defies conventional economic rationales. Researchers offer different theories to explain this puzzle. But so far, due to the lack of data, little effort has been made to test these theories at the firm level. We develop a framework of endogenous institutional change to explain this puzzle and we test our framework with firm-level data. We argue that the decentralization from the central to the local governments and from government to firms are the driving forces behind China's institutional changes that have shaped the roles of government and market, which in turn significantly affect firm performance. We then submit our theory to a vigorous empirical test using data from China's industrial census, covering all 2000 counties and over 500 manufacturing industries. The test shows that two results of decentralization, the involvement of low-level governments in business and the process of privatization, positively affect firm performance. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004

Suggested Citation

  • Shaomin Li, 2004. "The Puzzle of Firm Performance in China: An Institutional Explanation," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 47-68, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:ecopln:v:37:y:2004:i:1:p:47-68
    DOI: 10.1007/s10644-004-1583-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10644-004-1583-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10644-004-1583-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yingyi Qian & Barry R. Weingast, 1997. "Federalism as a Commitment to Reserving Market Incentives," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 83-92, Fall.
    2. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    3. Schmalensee, Richard, 1989. "Inter-industry studies of structure and performance," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 16, pages 951-1009, Elsevier.
    4. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    5. Jeong, Kap-Young & Masson, Robert T, 1990. "Market Structure, Entry, and Performance in Korea," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(3), pages 455-462, August.
    6. Li, Shaomin & Li, Shuhe & Zhang, Weiying, 2000. "The Road to Capitalism: Competition and Institutional Change in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 269-292, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ding, Sai & Guariglia, Alessandra & Knight, John, 2013. "Investment and financing constraints in China: Does working capital management make a difference?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1490-1507.
    2. Sai Ding & Alessandra Guariglia & Richard Harris, 2016. "The determinants of productivity in Chinese large and medium-sized industrial firms, 1998–2007," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 131-155, April.
    3. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Vinod Mishra, 2017. "Trust, Social Networks and Subjective Wellbeing in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 313-339, May.
    4. Xia, Jun & Li, Shaomin & Long, Cheryl, 2009. "The Transformation of Collectively Owned Enterprises and its Outcomes in China, 2001-05," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 1651-1662, October.
    5. Sai Ding & John Knight & Xiao Zhang, 2019. "Does China overinvest? Evidence from a panel of Chinese firms," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 489-507, April.
    6. Alessandra Guariglia & Simona Mateut, 2011. "Political affiliation and trade credit extension by Chinese firms," Discussion Papers 11/12, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    7. Qin, Zhong, 2011. "Models of trust-sharing in Chinese private enterprises," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1017-1029, May.
    8. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Maria Rebecca Valenzuela & Wisdom Sablah, 2017. "Ethnic diversity and firm performance: Evidence from China’s materials and industrial sectors," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1711-1731, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    2. Aghion, Philippe & Akcigit, Ufuk & Howitt, Peter, 2014. "What Do We Learn From Schumpeterian Growth Theory?," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 515-563, Elsevier.
    3. Ghosal, Vivek, 2007. "Small is Beautiful but Size Matters: The Asymmetric Impact of Uncertainty and Sunk Costs on Small and Large Businesses," MPRA Paper 5461, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Martin Gaynor, "undated". "What Do We Know About Competition and Quality in Health Care Markets?," GSIA Working Papers 2006-E62, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    5. Mark L.J. Wright & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2004. "Firm Size Dynamics in the Aggregate Economy," 2004 Meeting Papers 878, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Derek Bosworth & Joanne Loundes, 2002. "The Dynamic Performance of Australian Enterprises," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2002n03, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    7. Marcelo Resende, 2009. "Concentration and market size: lower bound estimates for the Brazilian industry," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 2465-2471.
    8. Sascha A. Weber & Sven M. Anders, 2007. "Price rigidity and market power in German retailing," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 737-749.
    9. Nillesen, P.H.L., 2008. "The future of electricity distribution regulation : Lessons from international experience," Other publications TiSEM e80aca08-4ccd-4b06-99c0-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Livat, Florine & Remaud, Hervé, 2016. "Factors Impacting Wine Price Mark-Ups in Restaurants," Working Papers 234639, American Association of Wine Economists.
    11. Christian Schwens & Marcus Wagner, 2019. "The role of firm-internal corporate environmental standards for organizational performance," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 89(7), pages 823-843, September.
    12. Joachim Wagner, 2014. "Exports and firm profitability: Quality matters!," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(3), pages 1644-1652.
    13. Connor, John M & Peterson, Everett B, 1992. "Market-Structure Determinants of National Brand-Private Label Price Differences of Manufactured Food Products," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 157-171, June.
    14. Farrell Joseph & Shapiro Carl, 2010. "Antitrust Evaluation of Horizontal Mergers: An Economic Alternative to Market Definition," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-41, March.
    15. Catherine A. Durham, 1991. "The Empirical Analysis of Oligopsony in Agricultural Markets: Residual Supply Estimation in California's Processing Tomato Market," Food Marketing Policy Center Research Reports 015, University of Connecticut, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Charles J. Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy.
    16. Lars-Hendrik Röller & Johan Stennek & Frank Verboven, 2006. "Efficiency Gains from Mergers," Chapters, in: Fabienne IIzkovitz & Roderick Meiklejohn (ed.), European Merger Control, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Nair-Reichert, Usha & Pomery, John, 1999. "International R&D rivalry and export market shares of unionized industries: Some evidence from the US manufacturing sector," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 77-97, October.
    18. Catherine Matraves & Laura Rondi, 2007. "Product Differentiation, Industry Concentration and Market Share Turbulence," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 37-57.
    19. Patel, Pankaj C. & João Guedes, Maria & Pagano, Michael S. & Olson, Gerard T., 2020. "Industry profitability matters: The value of sustainable growth rate and distance from bankruptcy as enablers of venture survival," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 80-92.
    20. Natália Barbosa, 2003. "What drives new firms into an industry? An integrative model of entry," NIMA Working Papers 23, Núcleo de Investigação em Microeconomia Aplicada (NIMA), Universidade do Minho.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:ecopln:v:37:y:2004:i:1:p:47-68. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.