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.
When China’s total expenditure on scientific research is now among the top of the world, and its overall scientific and technological level is close to the world frontier (decreasing distance to technology frontier), its investment orientation in R&D (toward application research or basic research) is important to determine the industrial innovation to a large extent. This paper testifies from both theoretical and empirical aspects that there objectively exists an optimal distance to technology frontier. When the technology distance to frontier is shorter than the optimal one, long-run high investment in application research will inhabit industrial innovation; in contrast, long-run high investment in basic research will enhance the ability of innovation among Chinese enterprises and reverse diminishing marginal negative effect of application research to industrial innovation by narrower the optimal gap between Chinese technology and the world frontier. The policy implication is that when the development of Chinese industries are at a historic turning point, only by continuously investing in basic research can help to make China’s industrial innovation transform from imitative innovation to independent innovation.
The manufacturing sector plays a significant role in China’s economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions, and thus its emission-reduction performance has a crucial effect on whether China’s emission-reduction targets would be realized. Under the background of “Made in China 2025” and China’s 2030 emission-reduction targets, this paper first employs the generalized Divisia index method to investigate determinants of CO2 emission changes of the manufacturing sector during the period 1995–2014, and then adopts the Monte Carlo simulation to conduct a dynamic scenario analysis on potential trajectories of CO2 emissions of the manufacturing sector during the period 2015–2030. Furthermore, we explore contributions of various drivers peaking CO2 emissions. The results show that investment scale is the primary driver for the increase in CO2 emissions, while carbon intensity of investment and carbon intensity of output are leading contributors to the reduction in CO2 emissions. Heavy industry and light industry present different effects of drivers on CO2 emissions due to their different development characteristics. CO2 emissions will consistently increase before 2030 under the business-as-usual scenario and green-development scenario. In contrast, CO2 emissions are very likely to hit the peak in 2024 under the technological breakthrough scenario. All the scenarios will achieve intensity-reduction targets, except the green-development scenario for the “Made in China 2025” target. The weakening scale effect provides a prerequisite for peaking CO2 emissions, while carbon intensity of investment and carbon intensity of output play a key role in peaking CO2 emissions. The government should further encourage manufacturing enterprises to increase investment activities aimed at energy saving and emission reduction. Under the condition of strict energy-saving and emission-reduction measures and vigorous development of low-carbon technology innovation, the manufacturing sector will have substantial CO2 mitigation potential.
Under the new normal in China, improving the allocation efficiency of capital is an important way to realize the transformation of economic growth mode. With the development of economic society, the notion that business activities including operating activities and investment activities is gradually popular. In the context of business activities reclassified, the study of capital allocation can be further extended to the level of business activities. This paper constructs the capital misallocation index of enterprises from the perspective of reclassification of business activities. Based on the empirical analysis of the Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2015, it is found that the misallocation between the business activities is common in China, and the firms with the more serious capital misallocation have lower firm values (ROA and Tobin Q). Further analysis shows that the increase of asset specificity will aggravate the negative effect of capital misallocation on ROA, but will mitigate the negative effect of capital misallocation on Tobin Q. Based on the perspective of reclassification of business activities, this paper discovers a kind of capital misallocation that damages firm value, broadens the research perspective of micro-capital allocation, and provides reference and suggestions for the capital allocation of listed companies.
Based on a comprehensive method, this paper identifies zombie firms with the Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database and the data of listed companies. It finds that zombie firms account for 10.1%–19.7% of all industrial firms in 2001–2007; while 12.1%-26.0% of all listed firms in 2000–2015. Moreover, zombie firms have following distribution characteristics. In general, the proportion of zombie firms by number and asset scale are related to economic cycle; in terms of regional distribution, those by number and asset scale in the eastern area is the lowest, while those by number in the western area, and those by asset scale in the north-eastern area are the highest; in terms of industry, those whose pricing is monopolized by governments and where state-owned companies are the major part have high proportion of zombie firms by number; in terms of ownership, those by number and asset scale in state-owned enterprises are always the highest. Furthermore, this paper categorizes zombie firms into two groups using the asset-liability ratio: those that should enter into bankruptcy proceedings, and transfer residual control rights to creditors; and those that shareholders of which can still have residual control rights. The categorizing results offer thoughts for dealing with zombie firms variously. This paper points out that the existence of zombie firms cannot only be attributed to “moisturizing effects” of governments’ subsidiaries, but also to “hindering effects” of high bankruptcy costs. Accordingly, to deal with zombie firms, apart from the improvement of company management so as to push forward the reorganization of the board of directors or managers, asset restructuring, etc., the paper also suggests that justice departments should pilot and propose simple bankruptcy proceedings, and emphasizes strict financial disciplines, so as to prevent the continuing increasing occupation of production resources and deterioration to the whole economic efficiency of zombie firms.
Because of the rapid development of the information industry, open platforms and closed platforms have been concerned by more and more people. The analysis on traditional industries shows that the resource allocation model of these two types of platforms is ubiquitous in many industries. The existing studies about the platform itself and final consumers are very comprehensive, and this paper studies the downstream manufacturers between these two. Considering the number of downstream manufacturers is far less than that of final consumers, the network effect which much literature has paid attention to is of little significance in the platform decision-making of the downstream manufacturers. On the basis of defining different types of platforms as demand advantage and cost advantage, this paper has constructed the dynamic game model with incomplete information that is chosen by platforms, based on taking the result of dynamic games (production) with complete information as payment. The results of model analysis show that under the separation strategy, if the first manufacturers do not follow the demand advantage to select the platform type, there is no game equilibrium. If the first manufacturers select the platform type in accordance with the demand, the greater the demand advantage is, the more likely the following manufacturers tend to choose a closed platform; the greater the cost advantage is, the more likely the following manufacturers tend to choose an open platform. In the pooling and separation equilibrium strategy, when the first manufacturers always choose the open platform, if the probability of the high demand’s non-equilibrium path is greater than the priori probability, then the greater the demand advantage is, the greater the cost advantage is, and the more likely the following manufacturers choose to open platforms; otherwise, they are more inclined to choose closed platforms. When the first manufacturers always choose closed platforms, if the high demand’s priori probability is greater than the probability of the non-equilibrium path, then the greater the demand advantage is, the smaller the cost advantage is, and the more likely the following manufacturers tend to choose closed platforms; otherwise, they are more inclined to choose open platforms.
After thirty years of reform and opening-up, the downstream market of China has almost realized free competition, while the degree of upstream monopoly remains high. In this paper, we analyze the impacts and mechanisms of upstream monopoly on domestic value added ratio (DVAR) of firms’ exports by using the micro data of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The results show that, upstream monopoly significantly reduces the downstream firms’ DVAR, and such impacts are particularly higher for ordinary trade firms and indigenous firms than that of processing firms and foreign-invested firms, respectively. The mechanism analysis shows that the markup reduction and R&D innovation weakening are the two potential channels through which upstream monopoly reduces the downstream firms’ DVAR. In addition, we examine the moderating effect of input trade liberalization in the relationship between upstream monopoly and the downstream firms’ DVAR based on the fact that drastic tariff reduction arising from China’s accession to the WTO, and find that input trade liberalization helps to ease the negative impact of upstream monopoly on the downstream firms’ DVAR. The results above suggest that reducing the upstream monopoly as well as promoting the trade liberalization reform are important for improving the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing export and raising firms’ domestic value added ratio of exports.
A large number of Internet entrepreneurial actions occur in the traditional industries under the strong control of policies. In these industries, enterprises need to break the existing institutional constraints and build new institutional frameworks by themselves. Existing study shows that enterprises have two strategic selections including embeddedness and agency, but it is lack of the analysis of mechanism. This paper takes Didi Chuxing as an example, distinguishing the different institutional pressures between enterprise and business units, and focusing on two questions about “what the firms should do” and “how to do it. ” The study shows that ① the strategic logic of entrepreneurial enterprises under institutional pressure is different from traditional enterprises. It is necessary to encompass the logic of efficiency with the logic of legitimacy to analyze the logic of strategic decision. ② As to the question of business choice (what to do), we find that facing strong institutional pressure, to gain legitimacy, enterprises prefer to use the legitimacy strategy such as choosing the business field with weak institutional pressure. When legitimacy has been promoted, enterprises under weak institutional pressure are more likely to find and construct entrepreneurial opportunities in the institutional environment and adopt the efficiency strategy such as stepping into the business field with strong institutional pressure. ③ In business development (how to do), the decision of theembeddedness strategy and the agency strategy is not only influenced by the institutional pressure, but also the degree of entrepreneurial institutional competencies and field centrality. The agency strategy is preferred with greater entrepreneurial institutional competencies and field centrality. ④ The characteristic of binary choices of embeddedness and agency of entrepreneurial strategy under institutional pressure is punctuated equilibrium in the temporal dimension and structured separation in the spatial dimension.
