摘要
利用中国工业企业数据匹配地级市市委书记数据,本文证实了地方官员对于企业产能过剩的重要影响。研究发现,地方官员变更会加剧辖区内企业的产能过剩,表现为企业产能利用率显著下降。企业产能过剩随着官员任职变化、党代会召开表现出明显的政治周期。当新任市委书记为本地籍贯或者临近退休时,企业产能利用率降幅更大,非正常换届时,官员变更会导致企业产能利用率的下降。进一步研究发现,考虑官员变更的情况下,与潮涌效应相比,企业产能过剩更可能是地方官员迫于政绩压力施加干预的结果;地方官员会通过税收、银行贷款、政府补贴等关键资源的配置推动企业产能扩张;处于非产能过剩行业的企业,官员更替时产能过剩更加严重;去产能政策能够抑制官员变更导致的企业产能过剩。本文对于从地方官员视角和微观层面理解中国式产能过剩现象以及监管部门推进供给侧结构性改革具有一定参考价值。
Excess capacity is a long-standing problem in China's rapid economic development. Curbing overcapacity is high on the government reform agenda, as the government views it as one of the most important tasks in reforming the economic structure. Regarding the drivers of China's overcapacity, market failure and governmental intervention have been put forward as competing explanations. Rather than taking an industry-wide perspective, this paper investigates the causes of overcapacity at the enterprise level, given the unique relationship between local officials in China (who are fundamentally different from their Western counterparts) and firms. Due to tenure limits or other reasons, local government officials turnover decisions render the local policy environment uncertain. This affects firms production and operation behaviors, especially decisions related to output. Accordingly, this paper examines whether the turnover of local government officials reduces or promotes the capacity utilization rate of local firms, and investigates the causes of China's overcapacity at the micro level. This paper uses data on changes in municipal party secretaries in China, matched with data on Chinese industrial enterprises, to study the effects of local officials turnover on enterprises overcapacity. Our empirical results confirm the important influence of local officials on enterprises overcapacity, showing that turnover aggravates enterprises overcapacity;enterprises capacity utilization experiences a significant decline when turnover occurs. The findings are robust when using propensity score matching and a difference-in-differences model, two-stage least squares regression, change regression, and different samples or measures of capacity utilization. Enterprises overcapacity shows an obvious political cycle that is closely tied to officials tenures and the Congress of the Communist Party. In addition, enterprises capacity utilization declines more sharply when newer-appointed secretaries have a local background or are approaching retirement, and the decreases are more significant when the change from the previous secretary happens under abnormal circumstances. Moreover, enterprises overcapacity is more likely to be driven by political promotion pressures than by the “wave phenomenon”, and local officials can promote the expansion of enterprises capacity through the allocation of key resources such as taxes, bank loans, and subsidies. Enterprises in non-overcapacity industries are more likely to have excess capacity when facing local official turnover, but policies on cutting overcapacity can restrain enterprises turnover-associated overcapacity. This paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, it helps advance our understanding of China's overcapacity through the unique lens of local officials and enterprise overcapacity. Our empirical evidence confirms that local officials can exert significant influence on enterprises capacity through changes in core leaders who have critical impacts on local economic development and policies. The conclusions of this paper thus enrich the literature on excess capacity and provide micro-level evidence for the explanation of governmental intervention in China's overcapacity. Second, the findings indicate that enterprises overcapacity exhibits political cycles. Our evidence shows that micro-level overcapacity changes along with officials tenures and the National Congress of the Communist Party, which reflects the cycles of China's overcapacity. Furthermore, we provide evidence of potentially important mechanisms in the turnover/overcapacity relationship by analyzing the mediating roles of taxes, bank loans, and subsidies. The argument that governmental intervention explains China's overcapacity is based on the notion that intervention into resource allocation decreases the cost of firms investments;our paper supports this possible channel. Finally, this paper also provides a reference for advancing supply-side structural reforms and tackling overcapacity by promoting governments and officials governance.
作者
徐业坤
马光源
XU Yekun;MA Guangyuan(Business School, Liaoning University)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2019年第5期129-145,共17页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家自然科学基金青年项目“地方官员晋升、资源配置与企业扩张行为研究”(71602082)
国家自然科学基金青年项目“政党制度背景下的高管激励与国有企业治理研究:治理机制及其经济后果”(71602126)
“高管外部并购经验与企业并购:基于并购数量与并购质量双重视角的研究”(71802041)等项目的资助
教育部人文社会科学研究基金青年项目“寻租、高管政治晋升与国有企业信息披露”(16YJC630148)
关键词
地方官员变更
产能过剩
产能利用率
政治周期
Local Officials Turnover
Overcapacity
Capacity Utilization
Political Cycle
