摘要
准确衡量产能利用率是理解和解决产能过剩问题的关键。利用企业层面资本折旧率和产能利用率的对应关系,本文在生产函数估计框架中引入了产能利用率的作用,发展出同时估计产能利用率和生产率的方法。该方法清晰界定了产能利用率的概念,并具有广泛的适用性。本文利用该方法估计了中国工业企业1998—2007年以及2011—2013年间的产能利用率,结果显示:1)忽略产能利用率的变化在总体上低估了中国工业企业的生产率水平;2)在2007年以前,中国工业企业的产能利用率经历了一个整体上升的过程,但是在随后有所下降;3)不同性质的企业具有高度的异质性,生产率较高、人均资本存量较低、出口产出比更高以及利润率更高的企业往往有着更高的产能利用率。
Overcapacity of specific industries,such as steel and coal,has been viewed as one of the most important and extensively discussed economic issues of China.The main feature of overcapacity is a massive amount of idling capacity,often considered to be a sub-optimal situation.The overcapacity of the steel industry is also closely related to low export price.Therefore,it turns out to be the most common fuse of trade disputes between China and developed economies,such as the U.S.and European Union.Since the late 1990s,the Chinese government has initiated five rounds of policies aiming to tackle with overcapacity.However,overcapacity keeps emerging periodically for some specific industries despite government s efforts.Since 2012,reducing overcapacity of particular industries has been listed as one of the primary economic goals of the Chinese government.y definition,overcapacity is a low level of capacity utilization.Therefore,the key to understanding overcapacity is to precisely measure capacity utilization rate.However,current methods of measurement,such as data envelopment analysis and stochastic production frontiers,are far from satisfaction because of either the concepts they use to define overcapacity or their underlying assumptions.Based on the definition of Greenwood et al.(1988)and the conceptual framework of Ackerberg et al.(2015),we develop a new method to measure capacity utilization rate.We define the capacity utilization rate as capital utilization intensity and incorporate flexible capacity utilization rate into the production function estimation framework.Our underlying assumption is that higher capacity utilization leads to higher depreciation rate of capital.Thus,we can use capital depreciation rate as a proxy variable to estimate capacity utilization rate and total productivity factor simultaneously.Our method requires weaker assumptions,offers a more precise and intuitive characterization of overcapacity,and is more amenable to various extensions.Empirically,we apply our method to Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database.Collected and maintained by the National Bureau of Statistics,the database provides the most comprehensive micro-level information of Chinese industrial firms.It contains information on depreciation as well as inputs and outputs information for production function estimation.We estimate the capacity utilization rate and total factor productivity of Chinese industrial firms from 1998 to 2007 and from 2011 to 2013.Our results show that ignoring flexible capacity utilization would overestimate the elasticity of labor input on output and underestimate the elasticity of capital input.For most industries,this will lead to underestimation of firm-level productivity.Our results suggest that productivity of Chinese industrial firms has increased in the sample period.Compared with estimates of previous methods of capacity utilization,our estimates are much closer to the estimates obtained via direct investigation and more consistent with the macroeconomic background.Chinese industrial firms experienced an overall rise in capacity utilization rate from 1998 to 2007 and a drop around 2012.We also explored the variations in capacity utilization across firms.Firms with higher productivity,lower capital intensity,higher export intensity and profit ratio are associated with higher capacity utilization rate.Foreign-owned firms have the highest capacity utilization while state-owned enterprises have the lowest.We also observe substantial regional variations in capacity utilization across provinces.The policy implication of the results is that to tackle with overcapacity efficiently,policymakers should take into account the heterogeneity of overcapacity along different dimensions.The most important contribution of this paper lies in developing a new method of capacity utilization and utilization-adjusted total productivity factor.There are still a lot of controversies on the causes of and solutions to China s overcapacity problem.This paper tries to offer a benchmark framework to understand all these issues.We also provide some tentative and descriptive evidence to explore the variations in capacity utilization.Future research agenda concerning the mechanisms that give rise to overcapacity and the evaluation of related policies could be carried out based on the estimation strategy and results of this paper.
作者
余淼杰
金洋
张睿
YU Miaojie;JIN Yang;ZHANG Rui(National School of Development,Peking University)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2018年第5期56-71,共16页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家杰出青年科学基金项目"国际贸易与中国经济转型发展"( 71625007)
国家社会科学基金重点项目"企业创新与全要素生产率提升和质量升级研究"( 16AZD003)
国家自然科学基金面上项目"汇率变动
产品质量
成本加成定价和加工贸易企业附加值提升"( 71573006)
2015 年度教育部人文社科重点研究基地重大项目"产品质量
企业绩效与国际贸易研究"( 15JJD780001) 的资助
北京大学博士研究生才斋奖学金的资助
关键词
产能利用率
生产率
产能过剩
Capacity Utilization Rate
Productivity
Overcapacity
