中国上市公司之间的资源错配：国有企业的角色演变.pdfVIP

2 JURZYK AND RUANE 1. Introduction China has experienced a sustained period of growth over the last three decades. During this time, Chinese authorities have pursued major reforms, including a transition away from state management of most sectors of the economy. Indeed, between 1998 and 2005 the share of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in industrial output fell from 50 to 30 percent. This transition coincided with rapid aggregate productivity growth, which came in part from the growth of the private sector at the expense of less productive SOEs (Hsieh and Song, 2015; Brandt, Van Biesebroeck and Zhang, 2012). However, productivity growth and progress on SOE reforms slowed in recent years. The slogan of “Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small” reflected the Chinese government’s desire to maintain control of the largest and most profitable SOEs, many of which were publicly listed. Some of these SOEs became national champions, growing into indus- try leaders and now counting among the world’s largest firms (IMF Fiscal Monitor, April 2020). In China itself, large publicly listed SOEs account now for 35 percent of aggregate SOE revenues. Though a new wave of SOE reforms, particularly focused on larger firms, was announced at the Third Plenum in 2013, reform progress appears to have been slow, with the government reluctant to reduce its role (Rosen et al., 2018). The question re- mains, therefore, whether there is scope for further reforms of the state-owned sector which could provide a boost to productivity growth. This is especially relevant given that aggregate productivity growth in China has slowed over the past decade, averag- ing a mere 0.6 percent between 2012 and 2017. Our paper contributes to this debate by measuring productivity gaps between listed SOEs and private firms from 2002 to 2019, and quantifying the potential gains from reforms. We use data on publicly listed Chinese firms o