Competition, Ownership, Corporate Governance: Their Importance and Interactions

Abstract

There exist three views in the comparative literature on the efficiency of state-owned versus private enterprises: competition, ownership, and governance. Each view emphasizes on one aspect while ignoring others. This paper employs a unique World Bank survey data of 736 Chinese firms across seven sectors and five cities from 1996 to 2001 to assess the relative importance of the above three views, both independently, jointly, and their interactions. It is found that:(1)when examined independently each determinant matters in explaining the efficiency of our sample firms. However, when they are jointly examined, ownership structure and corporate governance are relatively more important, while the competition effect is less significant;(2)there appears to exist some degree of substitutability between two pairs: privatization and corporate governance, and privatization and competition; and(3)non state-owned enterprises(non-SOEs)seem to have certain advantage in some governance mechanisms than SOEs, but market competition matters more for SOEs than for non-SOEs. These findings suggest that the three views are indeed incomplete by themselves, and a complete package requires some combination of these determinants. Finally, our results have important policy implications for China’s on-going privatization movement and her strive for better corporate governance and market competition.

對于國有企業與民營企業間的績效差異,文獻一般從三個理論角度進行研究:競爭、產權與公司治理。但是我們認為其中的各種觀點都只強調了某一個方面而忽略了其他方面。本文采用世界銀行對中國5大城市7個行業的700多家公司在1996—2001年運營情況的調查數據,分別從單因素效應、多因素效應以及它們之間的相互作用三個方面,對以上三個理論的相對重要性進行了實證研究。研究發現:(1)當分別對各單個因素進行考察時,各因素都對樣本公司績效有積極影響。然而當對這些因素進行綜合考察時,我們發現產權結構與公司治理作用相對重要,而競爭效應則不甚顯著;(2)在產權與公司治理,以及產權與競爭之間,存在著某種程度的替代性;(3)非國有企業在某些治理機制方面比國有企業顯示出特定的優勢,但另一方面市場競爭對于國有企業績效影響大于對非國有企業的影響。研究表明,現有的理論觀點都有其片面性,對企業績效的全面的研究需要將三個理論體系結合起來進行綜合考察。我們的研究將對中國正在推行的民營化浪潮,以及改善公司治理和完善市場競爭,都具有重要的政策指導意義。