僵尸企业的投资挤出效应：基于中国工业企业的证据

The Crowding-out Effect of Zombie Firms:Evidence from China's Industrial Firms

本文采用1998—2013年中国规模以上工业企业数据,研究了僵尸企业对非僵尸企业投资行为的影响。实证结果表明,一省的僵尸企业比例越高,当地非僵尸企业的投资规模越小,且这一挤出效应对私有企业尤为明显,而对国有企业并不显著。上述结果在不同固定效应设定、不同数据样本以及工具变量回归中均保持稳健。另外,僵尸企业对私有非僵尸企业投资的挤出在国家干预程度更强的地区和外部融资依赖程度更高的行业表现得更为明显。本文的研究显示,僵尸企业可能是造成近年民间投资疲软的重要原因之一,它减弱了金融对实体经济的支持。因此,一方面,政府应该积极推进国有企业和金融体系的市场化改革,消除僵尸企业形成的政策环境。另一方面,也要采取果断的市场化措施处置僵尸企业。

Faced with lower domestic growth rates and an increasingly severe economic situation, the Chinese government has put forward a broad agenda for supply-side structural reform. The strategy aims to ＂ cut overcapacity and excess inventory, deleverage, reduce costs, and strengthen points of weakness＂. The elimination of nonviable ＂ zombie＂ firms （insolvent firms that continue to operate due to continued access to financing at extremely low costs） is regarded as a key measure for effectively cutting overcapacity and deleverage. To properly address the zombie issue, it is necessary to identify zombie firms and understand their negative effects. Although the zombie phenomenon has received considerable attention in policy discussion in China （He and Zhu, 2016a, 2016b）, rigorous empirical studies of the phenomenon in China based on large samples are limited. In terms of the phenomenon＇s effects, most discussions are still based on empirical evidence in the Japanese context （ Caballero et al. , 2008; Kwon et al. , 2009）. However, it is important to empirically assess the impact of zombie firms in China, as China＇s economic system is different to advanced economies like Japan. First, China is in an economic transition period, and the finance sector is largely depressed. Banks are the main source of external corporate financing, and state-owned institutions dominate the banking system. As credit discrimination and credit rationing are widespread （Ji et al. , 2016） , distorted credit distribution by zombies can affect business investment by squeezing out financing opportunities for other firms. Second, state-owned enterprises （SOEs） in China are generally less efficient than private firms, but are still significant in the economy and have better access to resources （Cull and Xu, 2003; Ferri and Liu, 2010）. We believe it is necessary to distinguish between SOEs and private enterprises when analyzing the impact of zombies firms in China. Therefore, in this paper, we account for China＇s unique characteristics in terms of the financial system and real economy and investigate how zombies affect other firms. We need to understand the spillover effect of the zombie phenomenon, understand China＇s economic slowdown from a micro perspective, estimate the benefits of a solution to the zombie issue, and clarify the policy direction for dealing with zombie firms. Using the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms dataset covering the period between 1998 and 2013, this paper investigates the effect of zombie firms on the investment behavior of non-zombie firms. Based on the identification of zombie enterprises in the literature, we measure zombies as firms with implicit subsidies on interest payments whose earnings before interest and tax are not enough to pay interest at prime interest rates. The number of zombie firms in China declined rapidly in the early 21~t century, rebounded prominently during the financial crisis, and declined following the fiscal stimulus plan in 2010. However, it increased again in 2012 and 2013, and （weighted by debt） reached 16.6% in 2013. SOEs, the northeast region and resource industries have higher proportions of zombies. Our regression results demonstrate that the higher the proportion of zombie firms in a province, the lower the investment scale of non-zombie firms. This effect is more evident for private firms and is not significant for state-owned firms. These patterns remain robust in different specifications of fixed effects, in different samples and in instrument variable regressions. In addition, the crowding-out of private firms＇ investment is more apparent in provinces with stronger government interventions and in industries that are more dependent on external finance. The policy implication of this paper is that the proper disposal of zombie firms is beneficial for the expansion of private firms＇ investment. Deepened reform of state-owned firms and the financial system and the development of market exit mechanisms are appropriate methods for coping with zombie firms.