China Industrial Economics is supervised by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and sponsored by Institute of Industrial Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It aims to report researches on industrial economics and business management, and to reflect outstanding research results on Chinese industrial economy and enterprise development. The scope covers national economy, industrial economy and business management. The journal is included in CSSCI, and is the top journal in the field of industrial economics in China.
This paper empirically analyzes the inter-regional trade (IRT) patterns at the provincial level and 4-geat-region regional level in China under the perspective of carbon emissions by using the input-output model. The results indicate that most of the IRTs at the provincial level display as the pollution haven pattern (PHP) or factor endowment pattern (FEP) in typical years and some of them display even both as the PHP and FEP. The IRTs at the 4-great-region regional level mainly display as the PHP and some of them also display as the FEP. Further, the IRTs of some provinces or regions may display as the PHP in some year but display as the FEP in another year. Therefore, pollution haven hypothesis and factor endowment theory can only partly explain the IRTs in China, but the combination of these two can explain the IRTs in China very well. However, the IRTs of several provinces or regions display as other patterns in certain years. At the same time, the IRT patterns as a whole are unhelpful for mitigating total carbon emissions in China at present time. The findings of this paper imply that it can optimize the inter-regional trade pattern and promote carbon mitigation in China by enforcing environmental regulation, tightening inter-regional collaboration on environmental governance and deepening regional economic integration.
Monopoly enterprises with standard essential patents (SEPs) charge Chinese domestic enterprises discriminatory patent licensing fees, which has become a key issue and difficulty in antitrust law enforcement. Taking the lawsuit cases of Huawei vs. IDC and of Qualcomm as examples, this paper uses a game model to demonstrate that patent monopoly enterprises charge the downstream low-cost enterprises higher and discriminatory licensing fees. For the low-cost enterprises, this suppresses their competitive advantages, reduces their output and market shares, hinders their technology innovation, and hence reduces the overall social welfare. Thus, higher discriminatory licensing fees harm competition and should be prohibited by antitrust laws. Antitrust review of discriminatory licensing fees should be primarily based on the FRAND principle (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory). Due to the absence of methods to calculate widely accepted “reasonable royalty“ and the lack of information for law enforcement agencies, antitrust enforcement should avoid directly providing “reasonable” levels of license fees, instead, it should focus on safeguarding the effectiveness of the inter-business free negotiation transaction mechanism. It is suggested that a three-part structured method be used to do antitrust review, an arbitration mechanism used to settle the license fee disputes, and the principle of “intervening in the pricing mechanism rather than in the price levels” adhered to.
Family succession is a hot issue. Existing empirical studies mainly focus on the family firms’ performance after the succession. It is urgent for scholars to reveal the inner mechanism between succession and performance. This paper focuses on strategic change around the succession trying to build strategy-based analysis logic. Moreover, the authors discussed the impact of predecessors’ legitimacy on the strategy change from the perspective of institutional legitimacy and strategic legitimacy. Based on data of listed family firms during 2003 to 2014, this paper designs an experiment with the moment the successor enters the top management team as the beginning of the family succession. The results indicate that family business would conduct significant strategic change around the succession window, choosing more diversified strategies, while predecessors’ legitimacy would significantly narrow the strategic diversity. We find it harmful to the succession when the predecessor’s legitimacy is too high or too low. It is most important for the family firms to find how to balance the stability and stimulation and effective ways to succession so as to lower the negative effect of legitimacy.
Using the data of independent directors’ independent opinions from 2005–2011, an empirical research on the “adverse selection” of independent directors was conducted in this article by observing independent directors’ departure and their attainment of new directorships one to three years after voicing their independent opinions, and by comparing the departed independent directors with their successors in terms of their independence and reputation. The study finds that in listed companies being queried by independent directors, the effect of “adverse selection” is very significant. There is a significantly higher probability that dutiful independent directors are to leave their positions, and their successors are of lower levels of independence and reputation. The human capital market for independent directors has not corrected this type of “adverse selection” effect that exists in a segment of listed companies. On the contrary, it has reinforced “adverse selection” on a larger scale. The number of directorships subsequently attained by dutiful independent directors is significantly lower than the number attained by undutiful independent directors. This also indicates the lack of an effective reward and punishment mechanism in the market of independent directors. In addition, departure of the majority of dutiful independent directors has occurred before completion of their maximum term of office at the change of board of directors, which demonstrates that the root cause of “adverse selection” is the defect in the system design as the authority of appointment and dismissal of independent directors is within the grasp of the actual controllers.
How does modern mating pattern impact on the income inequality of Chinese households? Positive assortative mating pattern provides a new perspective to analyze this phenomenon. Since the reform and opening up, in the process of industrialization, the mating pattern changed from ascribed features of old days to achieved characteristics of modern society, such as from family status to education and human capital, and education has become the main criterion for positive assortative mating. With the popularization of primary education and the modernization of higher education, the educational positive assortative mating leads to the Matthew Effect by a higher return to China’s labor market, exacerbated the households income inequality. By using the data of Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), this paper aims to study the mating pattern measured by the education level of the spouses. Research has shown that the educational homogamy presents an intensified trend from 1988 to 2008. Furthermore, the degree of household income inequality in positive assortative mating pattern is greater than that in random mating pattern, by building the accounting method of Gini coefficient in positive assortative mating and random mating. Additionally, the authors classify certain types in accordance with the education level of the spouses and set each type as certain stratum, by using the counterfactual method, it can be found that the households Gini coefficient in different education strata also reveals that educational homogamy intensify the household income inequality in different educational strata. The winning strategies to alleviate the household income inequality include strengthening social security, advocating diverse mating, carrying out the skill training for households in a low education level, and subsidizing the low-income households.
The pay dispersion is a double-edged sword, and there are both positive incentive and negative effects. Based on two competitive incentive theories—“tournament theory” and “behavior theory,” this paper builds the theoretical framework of the relationship between internal pay dispersion and corporate performance and takes advantage of China’s 348 listed manufacturing companies’ balanced panel data from 2004 to 2013. The threshold panel model method is used to examine the asymmetric incentive effects of internal pay dispersion on firm corporate, and then based on the incentive effect perspective of internal pay dispersion on executives and employees, the paper interprets the internal mechanism of the asymmetry. The study found that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the internal pay dispersion and corporate performance, and the positive incentive effect is different, which has significant threshold characteristic. When the internal pay dispersion is smaller than the critical value (5.978), there are stronger incentive effects on performance, and the firm’s investment efficiency and total factor productivity both increase significantly. The empirical evidences show that the internal pay dispersion which is more than the critical value not only slows down corporate performance but also weakens the positive incentive to the worker, which exists in some listed companies in China. This paper argues that according to the diminishing marginal effect of incentive pay dispersion, it is important to determine the critical value of internal pay dispersion to improve its incentive effect in enterprise salary management.
Taking the escape competition effect and its heterogeneity effect among firms as the core, this paper investigated the influencing mechanism of new entries on the incumbent firms. Based on this, this paper employs the quantile regression method that involves instrument variables and studies the influence of new entries on incumbent firms’ profitability. The result shows that since the start of the reform, new entries in manufacturing industries did not mean profit erosion to the incumbent firms but a trigger of profitability enhancement. The relationship between the enhancing effect incurred by the new entries and the profitability of the incumbent firms presents a U-curve shape, and the firms with lower and higher profitability gain more profit than other firms. Empirical tests of subsamples divided by industries show that the U-curve effect is common in the heavy industry; while in the light industry, the heterogeneity of the influence of entries on the profitability of the incumbent firms is mainly reflected in the following: its enhencement effect decreases as the profitability level of incumbent firms increases. As to the policy making process of the government, the government should not limit the new entries in China’s manufacturing industries taking excuses of deteriorating profitability and avoiding excessive entries. The government should on one hand encourage new entries and on the other hand accelerate the process of the perfection of the system of intellectual property rights protection, strengthen the construction of legal system and business ethics, and reduce the exiting cost of firms.
Beginning with Kaya identity, this article selects three basic indicators, the energy consumption intensity of output, the carbon emission intensity of energy consumption, and the carbon emission intensity of output, uses grey relational analysis method and distance coordination degree model, constructs three maturity measurement indexes, including the development index, the coordination index, and the coordinated development index, and based on the data of 30 provinces and 38 industrial sectors, evaluates comprehensively the industrial carbon reduction emission in China from the whole level and province-based and sector-based level from 2003 to 2012. The study shows that, though heavy trends reappeared in Chinese industry in 2003, driven by a series of policies, there is a continuing growth trend in the three maturity measurement indexes. In which, the mean of relative maturity indexes in the eastern region is higher than that in the northeast region, the central region and the western region, and the mean of the relative maturity index of manufacturing industry is higher than the mining industry and utilities. It also shows that, regional pattern and industrial structure have a significant effect on the overall maturity of China’s industrial carbon emission reduction, and the maturity of China’s industrial carbon emission reduction in some provinces and industrial sectors also has significant asynchronous phenomena in the level of development and coordination. According to the evaluation result, the local governments and various industrial sectors both need to set up reasonable low carbon policies and build mutual coordination mechanisms to continue promoting the maturity of China’s industrial carbon emission reduction.
