企业纵向一体化的决定因素与生产效率——来自我国制造业企业的经验证据

Determinants and Productivity of Vertical Integration: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms

本文运用2003年初世界银行与中国国家统计局合作的投资气氛调查项目提供的独特数据,首次较系统地实证检验了处于新兴与转轨经济时期的我国企业纵向一体化程度的决定因素,及其是否改善企业生产效率。结果发现,价格不确定性、政府对原材料供应行业的管制政策和契约实施强度等都会影响我国企业纵向一体化决策,且价格不确定性越高,政府对原材料供应行业采用规制政策,契约实施强度越弱,我国企业纵向一体化程度相应越高,同时纵向一体化程度与企业全要素生产率显著负相关。政策建议是发展与完善契约实施等市场经济基础设施,尽量实现专业化分工。

The empirical literature on vertical integration has focused on two main,interrelated questions：what do determine vertical integration and how vertical integration does directly affect firm’s total factor productivity.The answers to those two questions are important in that they can inform managers’decisions directly.Although in the last 25 years,empirical evidence that can shed light on those theories has been accumulating since Coase’s（1937）seminal paper on the subject,those empirical samples are basically collected from developed market economy and these samples are very small or at best specific industry data while they do not consider endogeneity of decision on vertical integration clearly.Thus in our study,using a survey of Chinese manufacturing firms conducted by the World Bank in cooperation with the Enterprise Survey Organization of China in early 2003,we systematically test what determines vertical integration and how vertical integration takes direct impacts on firm’s total factor productivity in China.The reply to the question regarding the percentage of parts in value used by a firm that are produced within the firm is used to construct the key explanatory variable of our study,i.e.,the degree of Vertical Integration and LevinsohnPetrin’s methodology（2003）is used to obtain firm’s total factor productivity.We find that price uncertainty, contract enforcement,financial development and government regulation affect the degree of vertical integration significantly, and the degree of vertical integration is a negative impact on firm total factor productivity when we establish the causal impacts of vertical integration on firm performance by adopting the instrumental variable approach to deal with the endogeneity issue of vertical integration.Our results lend support to the extent of market argument in the literature,and we suggest that we should develop infrastructure of a market economy such as contract enforcement,and make division specialization as possible as it can,thus improve total factor productivity of our firms.