Industrial reform policies: does marketization enhance productivity more than privatization?
利用中国工业企业数据，通过反事实设计分解私有化与市场化对生产率的影响，发现市场化带来的生产率提升大于私有化，建议产业改革应侧重资产整合和现金流改善而非所有权变更。
Abstract Placing state-owned firms into the private sector is understood to yield productivity gains, but this effect is seldom decomposed into changes in ownership (privatization) and changes in firm characteristics to match privately owned firms without changing ownership (marketization). This article presents an empirical assessment of Chinese firm-level data using a counterfactual design approach to identify if the Chinese ‘grasp the large and let go of the small’ industrial policy reform initiative reduced the efficiency gap between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises and whether any gains were associated with privatization or marketization. Our empirical results show that marketization was associated with stronger increases in productivity than was privatization, suggesting that industrial reforms should consolidate assets, enhance cash flows, and reduce the need for external liquidity rather than focusing on changing ownership.