When Trade Discourages Political Favoritism: Evidence from China
When Trade Discourages Political Favoritism: Evidence from China
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发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
15
通讯作者：
Yi Lu;Tuan-Hwee Sng;Ying Zhou
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Yi Lu;Tuan-Hwee Sng;Ying Zhou
在发展中国家，政府经常通过保护政治上受青睐的公司来扭曲资源分配。如果贸易自由化增加了保护成本，它可能会阻止政治偏袒，从而提高分配效率。本文以中国加入WTO为研究对象，实证研究了贸易自由化是否会导致市场份额从政治上有利但生产率较低的企业向生产率较高的企业重新分配。我们发现，贸易自由化导致国有企业的产出份额下降了2.5个百分点，并使中国制造业企业生产率的标准差在2001年至2005年期间下降了1.4%。国有企业产出份额的下降是由进口竞争加剧造成的，而且是在广泛的利润率和产业内生产重新分配的情况下发生的。有趣的是，国有企业退出的可能性与政治派别而不是绩效有关：县和乡镇政府下属的国有企业受到的打击最严重，而那些隶属于政府上层（中央，省和市）的国有企业基本上不受影响。我们的研究结果表明，除了熟悉的贸易收益来源外，贸易还可以通过减少政治经济学产生的低效率来实现福利收益。
In developing countries, governments often distort resource allocation by protecting politically favored firms. If trade liberalization increases the cost of protection, it may discourage political favoritism and therefore improve allocative efficiency. By studying China’s WTO accession, this paper empirically investigate if trade liberalization leads to the reallocation of market shares from politically favored but less productive firms to more productive ones. We find that trade liberalization induces a 2.5 percentage points decline in the output share of state-owned enterprises and reduces the standard deviation of Chinese manufacturing firm productivity by 1.4% between 2001 and 2005. The decline in SOE output share is driven by an increase in import competition and takes place at the extensive margin and through intra-industry reallocation of production. Interestingly, the likelihood of SOE exit is linked to political affiliation instead of performance: the SOEs affiliated to county and township governments were the worst hit while those affiliated to upper layers (central, provincial, and city) of the government were largely unaffected. Our results suggest that apart from the familiar sources of gains from trade, trade could also deliver welfare gains by reducing inefficiencies arising from the political economy.