An empirical study on the incentives for governments to restructure state-owned enterprises

Abstract

Why governments restructure some state-owned enterprises (SOE), while keep others as state-owned? What criteria are used when governments choose SOEs to restructure? In this paper, we use 1995-1997 firm level panel data of industrial enterprises in China to test established theories on SOE restructuring. We found that higher level governments place more weight on social stability when making restructuring decisions, and are less likely to restructure SOEs with higher debt ratios or surplus labor ratios. Our results also support the public interests theory, the income maximization theory, and the imperfect capital markets theory of SOE restructuring. However, there are mixed results about the rent seeking theory, and no support for the efficiency maximization theory.

政府為什麼要對部分國有企業進行改制，而保留在其他國有企業中的產權？政府的選擇標準是什麼？本文利用我國1995 — 1997年工業企業數據研究發現，基於社會穩定的考慮，高級別政府對負債率高和富餘職工多的國有企業改制比低​​級別政府謹慎，由此支持了關於改制的社會穩定理論。我們的研究還為關於改制的公眾利益理論、收入理論和欠發達資本市場理論提供了支持，部分地支持了尋租理論，而未對效率理論提供支持。