Can factor market competition, given pertinent incentives, bring about efficiency gains, or is privatisation necessary? We assess the impact of factor market competition on Chinese state-owned enterprises' productivity in a laboratory-like setting. The empirical evidence suggests that substantial efficiency gains are achievable pre-privatisation. Methodologically, we adapt an algorithm developed by Olley and Pakes (1996) which deals with simultaneity and selection bias in production function estimation. This is required since the reform process that introduced factor market competition involved endogenous group selection. While macro-level timing was important, enterprise characteristics, chiefly capital intensity and productivity, played an important role in the sequencing of reforms. Further, reform-induced competitive pressures brought about significant efficiency gains prior to privatisation. Finally, not controlling for selection bias would have resulted in an overestimation of reform-related productivity gains by up to fifty percent.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Central Bank & Financial Services Authority of Ireland (CBFSAI) in its series Research Technical Papers with number
3/RT/07.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Donal McSweeney).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: