中国地区腐败对企业全要素生产率的影响

The Impact of Regional Corruption on Firm TFP in China

使用1999-2007年中国制造业企业的微观数据,本文首次考察了中国地区层面的腐败对企业全要素生产率的影响。与现有文献不同,我们发现,总体上腐败与企业生产率之间并不存在一种单调关系。腐败既不是对所有企业都不利的"沙子",也不是对所有企业都有利的"润滑剂",而是对不同类型的企业有不同的影响。我们从三类特征上揭示了腐败对不同类型企业生产率的影响。第一,腐败对国有控股企业的生产率没有影响,对私人控股企业的生产率只有正效应,这可能是因为腐败有利于私人控股企业避开管制;第二,腐败对那些固定资产比例更高的企业具有更大的负效应;第三,腐败对那些中间产品结构比较复杂的行业具有更大的负效应。本文的研究对于理解和遏制腐败具有重要的政策含义。

This paper investigates the effect of corruption in Chinese local governments on firms＇ total factor productivity using micro data on mamffacturing firms during 1999-2007. Departing from existing literature, we find that there does not exist an unambiguous relationship between corruption and TFP. Corruption does not sand or grease the wheels of perform-ance of all firms uniformly, hut has heterogeneous effects on firms with different types. Three specific channels are iden-tified. First, eorruption does not affect state-owned firms, and affects private firms only positively. This observation im-plies that a moderate level of corruption helps non-stated-owned firms evade regulation. Second, Firms with higher fixed asset ratio suffers more from corruption. Third, sectors with more complex intermediate goods structure are more adverse-ly affected by corruption. Our findings promote a better understanding of corruption and have pertinent implications for anti-corruption policy design.