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The Effects of Federalism on Productivity in Chinese Firms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Sean M. Dougherty  and
Robert H. McGuckin
Sean M. Dougherty
Affiliation:
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris
Robert H. McGuckin
Affiliation:
The Conference Board, USA
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Abstract

This study offers empirical evidence about how the structure of government and private ownership affected productivity in Chinese firms. It uses the microdata of China's last decennial industrial census, covering all of the 23,000 large and medium-sized industrial firms operating in China during 1995. The results show that government decentralization – ‘federalism’ – played an important role in improving the performance of not just collective firms, but also state-owned and mixed public/private ownership firms. This result is strongly confirmatory of much of the recent theoretical work on transition economies that posits a key role for government in the efficient operation of markets.

Keywords

decentralizationfederalismjurisdictionownershipproductivity联邦制管辖权分权所有制生产效率
Type
Articles
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 39 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © International Association for Chinese Management Research 2008

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