We document that publicly listed Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are less productive and profitable than publicly listed firms in which the state has no ownership stake. In particular, Chinese listed SOEs are more capital intensive and have a lower average product of capital than non-SOEs. These productivity differences increased between 2002 and 2009, and remain sizeable in 2019. Using a heterogeneous firm model of resource misallocation, we find that there are large potential productivity gains from reforms which could equalize the marginal products of listed SOEs and listed non-SOEs.

This book seeks to document the impact of economic reforms on China's industrial sector and to explain why China's reforms have had such wide-reaching effects. The volume contains 11 coordinated studies that document and analyze changes in the governance and performance of China's industrial enterprises. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the structure of China's industrial enterprises. Chapter 2 extracts key aspects of the survey data to describe, compare, and contrast the systems of governance of key ownership types. Chapter 3 describes the special features of China's economic and institutional structure that create a kind of dynamic endogenous reform process, "an industrial innovation ladder." The ladder has two interactive dimensions. The first is technical innovation, modeled and empirically tested in chapter 4. The second is institutional change, or enterprise reform, viewed in chapter 5 as arising from both conditions within the industrial system and the efforts of central reformers. Chapters 6 and 7 assess the performance of Chinese industry. Chapters 8 through 11 present formal models and technical econometric work. Each of these chapters seeks to examine the behavior of one or more samples of enterprises with respect to a particular enterprise function.

First of the East Asia stream in the'Economics Division Working Papers'series in Pacific and Asian studies. Reports on the productivity, performance and priorities for the reform of China's state-owned enterprises. The report is the result of a 1993 survey of 300 state-owned, collective and foreign-funded enterprises in three of China's coastal provinces. Includes charts, diagrams and a list of references.

This work is a continuation of the authors' earlier publication, "The China Miracle: Development Strategy and Economic Reform". The authors review the historical evolution of the state-owned enterprises, analyze the current problems, and suggest the direction for future reforms.

The Nature, the Performance, and the Reform of State-owned Enterprises provides a detailed description of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China with respect to both efficiency and income distribution. It shows that state ownership in the form of SOEs does not use resources efficiently and has a poor record in income distribution. Moreover, SOEs are found to enjoy unfair advantages in their competition with other firms. To illustrate the point, the book presents data revealing how favored policies, monopolistic powers, and subsidies benefit SOEs. These advantages are worth several trillion yuans a year. It is a sad irony that such wealth of the people is used to beef up the revenues of the SOEs, making their accounts look much better than they should be.This book, with its rich empirical data and information, is an authoritative reference for researchers interested in SOEs. It is also a good read for students of social sciences and the public to learn more about SOEs.

`The book is an excellent example of the application of modern econometric techniques to Chinese data, some of which was especially collected for the research. The results throw new light on aspects of industrial sector reform in China. The book deserves wide attention from those interested in the economic reforms in China, especially those interested in the implications of the reforms for industrial sector efficiency and productivity growth.' - Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide As the rural township, village and private enterprises are becoming more and more significant in the Chinese economy, this book focuses on the comparison of the rural (non-state) and state firms in terms of performance. The analysis is based on the empirical results from estimating various production functions applied to cross-section and panel data. Both aggregate and firm-specific efficiencies are examined in the case studies, exploring potential sources of efficiency differentials such as ownership, scale, factor intensity, location and economic reforms. Special attention is also paid to the regional comparison of industrial development and performance. The implications of the findings in the book for economic and reform policy are thus highlighted.