IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jet/dpaper/dpaper748.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corruption, productivity, and import liberalization in China : a firm-level analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Lu, Jiankun
  • Meng, Bo
  • Zhang, Hongsheng

Abstract

Understanding whether and how corruption impacts firm productivity in China is crucial for promoting good governance of economic development. Based on our econometric model developed with China’s firm-level data, including detailed firm heterogeneity information and provincial records of government official-related corruption, we confirm that corruption acts as “sand” rather than “grease” in the wheels of firm productivity improvement. The hampering effect of corruption on firm productivity is not obvious for state-owned, relatively large-sized, and low productive firms, but it is quite significant for private, relatively small-sized, and high productive ones. More importantly, we find that a firm’s productivity gains from import liberalization are significantly inhibited by corruption. Therefore, if the institutional environment can be improved, firms in China possess great potential—especially private and small-sized firms—to be more efficient or be able to obtain more productivity gains from import liberalization.

Suggested Citation

  • Lu, Jiankun & Meng, Bo & Zhang, Hongsheng, 2019. "Corruption, productivity, and import liberalization in China : a firm-level analysis," IDE Discussion Papers 748, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    • Handle: RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper748
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ir.ide.go.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=50952&item_no=1&attribute_id=22&file_no=1
    File Function: First version, 2019
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sule Akkoyunlu and Debora Ramella, 2020. "Corruption and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 45(2), pages 63-93, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; productivity; firm heterogeneity; import liberalization; Chinese economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • O24 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Trade Policy; Factor Movement; Foreign Exchange Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:jet:dpaper:dpaper748. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michitaka Imamitsu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/idegvjp.html .

    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.