IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/26075.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

China’s Industrial Policy: an Empirical Evaluation

Author

Listed:
  • Panle Jia Barwick
  • Myrto Kalouptsidi
  • Nahim Bin Zahur

Abstract

Despite the historic prevalence of industrial policy and its current popularity, few empirical studies directly evaluate its welfare consequences. This paper examines an important industrial policy in China in the 2000s, aiming to propel the country’s shipbuilding industry to the largest globally. Using comprehensive data on shipyards worldwide and a dynamic model of firm entry, exit, investment, and production, we find that the scale of the policy was massive and boosted China’s domestic investment, entry, and world market share dramatically. On the other hand, it created sizable distortions and led to increased industry fragmentation and idleness. The effectiveness of different policy instruments is mixed: production and investment subsidies can be justified by market share considerations, but entry subsidies are wasteful. Finally, the distortions could have been significantly reduced by implementing counter-cyclical policies and by targeting subsidies towards more productive firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Panle Jia Barwick & Myrto Kalouptsidi & Nahim Bin Zahur, 2019. "China’s Industrial Policy: an Empirical Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 26075, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26075
    Note: DEV IO ITI PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w26075.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giulia Brancaccio & Myrto Kalouptsidi & Theodore Papageorgiou, 2017. "Geography, Search Frictions and Endogenous Trade Costs," NBER Working Papers 23581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Harrison, Ann & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2010. "Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4039-4214, Elsevier.
    3. Robinson, Peter M, 1982. "On the Asymptotic Properties of Estimators of Models Containing Limited Dependent Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 27-41, January.
    4. Katja Seim, 2006. "An empirical model of firm entry with endogenous product‐type choices," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 619-640, September.
    5. Hall, Bronwyn & Van Reenen, John, 2000. "How effective are fiscal incentives for R&D? A review of the evidence," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4-5), pages 449-469, April.
    6. Paul Krugman, 1986. "Strategic Trade Policy and the New International Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262610450, December.
    7. Joseph E. Aldy & Todd D. Gerarden & Richard L. Sweeney, 2023. "Investment versus Output Subsidies: Implications of Alternative Incentives for Wind Energy," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 981-1018.
    8. Yi Daniel Xu, 2008. "A Structural Empirical Model of R&D, Firm Heterogeneity , and Industry Evolution," 2008 Meeting Papers 744, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    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. Sears, Louis S. & Lin Lawell, C.-Y. Cynthia & Walter, M. Todd, 2020. "Groundwater Under Open Access: A Structural Model of the Dynamic Common Pool Extraction Game," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304276, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    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. Kalouptsidi, Myrto & Barwick, Panle Jia & Zahur, Nahim Bin, 2019. "China’s Industrial Policy: an Empirical Evaluation," CEPR Discussion Papers 13889, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. William Maloney & Andrés Rodríguez‐Clare, 2007. "Innovation Shortfalls," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(4), pages 665-684, November.
    3. Nathaniel Lane, 2020. "The New Empirics of Industrial Policy," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 209-234, June.
    4. Mitsuru Igami, 2015. "Offshoring under Oligopoly," 2015 Meeting Papers 713, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Mitsuru Igami, 2018. "Industry Dynamics of Offshoring: The Case of Hard Disk Drives," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 67-101, February.
    6. Panle Jia Barwick & Parag A. Pathak, 2015. "The costs of free entry: an empirical study of real estate agents in Greater Boston," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(1), pages 103-145, March.
    7. Mitsuru Igami, 2015. "Offshoring under Oligopoly," Working Papers BFI-2015-04, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    8. Stoneman, Paul, 2011. "Soft Innovation: Economics, Product Aesthetics, and the Creative Industries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199697021.
    9. Jean-Marc Siroën, 2016. "L'OMC face à la crise des négociations multilatérales," Working Papers hal-01399859, HAL.
    10. Heijs, Joost, 2003. "Freerider behaviour and the public finance of R&D activities in enterprises: the case of the Spanish low interest credits for R&D," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 445-461, March.
    11. Laisney, François & Pohlmeier, Winfried & Staat, Matthias, 1991. "Estimation of labour supply functions using panel data: a survey," ZEW Discussion Papers 91-05, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    12. Geoffrey Barrows & Hélène Ollivier & Ariell Reshef, 2023. "Production Function Estimation with Multi-Destination Firms," CESifo Working Paper Series 10716, CESifo.
    13. Csordas, Stefan, 2009. "The global welfare effects of international environmental cooperation," MPRA Paper 20787, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Bertrand, Olivier & Zuniga, Pluvia, 2006. "R&D and M&A: Are cross-border M&A different? An investigation on OECD countries," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 401-423, March.
    15. Ufuk Akcigit & Douglas Hanley & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2022. "Optimal Taxation and R&D Policies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(2), pages 645-684, March.
    16. Aamir Rafique Hashmi & Johannes Van Biesebroeck, 2016. "The Relationship between Market Structure and Innovation in Industry Equilibrium: A Case Study of the Global Automobile Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 192-208, March.
    17. Dominique Guellec & Bruno Van Pottelsberghe De La Potterie, 2003. "The impact of public R&D expenditure on business R&D," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 225-243.
    18. William Gale & Samuel Brown, 2013. "Small Business, Innovation, and Tax Policy: A Review," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(4), pages 871-892, December.
    19. Nishida, Mitsukuni & Gil, Ricard, 2014. "Regulation, enforcement, and entry: Evidence from the Spanish local TV industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 11-23.
    20. Steven W. Popper & Caroline S. Wagner, 2003. "Identifying critical technologies in the United States: a review of the federal effort," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(2-3), pages 113-128.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • L6 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing
    • O2 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:26075. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.