Productivity Growth and Ownership Change in China: 1998-2007

This paper studies the industry productivity dynamics in China’s manufacturing sector from 1998 to 2007, and in particular, explores to what extent the privatization of state-owned enter- prises (SOEs) contributes to the aggregate productivity growth. Our results show that, though non-SOEs on average are more productive than SOEs, the average productivity growth among SOEs is greater than their counterparts. Industry concentration, taxation, and credit market all account for this difference in growth between SOEs and non-SOEs. We find that industry productivity growth is mainly attributed to the growth of non-SOEs, entry of non-SOE firms, and the exit of SOEs. However, non-SOE firms that are transformed directly from SOEs make a small and negative contribution to industry productivity growth