Topic:Fragmented State Capitalism: Firm-Level Evidence from China

Speaker:Professor Yu Zheng, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut

Time: 2：00-4：00pm, Thursday, Dec., 27, 2012

Location:Room 216, New Building of GSM, Peking University.

Abstract

We argue that the Chinese-style state capitalism has significant distributional consequences on SOEs with clear winners and losers. The uneven distribution of political benefits and costs stem from major two sources: state discrimination by which the central government strategically promotes a small number of SOEs at the cost of a large number of local SOEs, and political distortion by which politically connected SOEs use their leverages to enhance their political benefits and reduce political burdens. Use a dataset of listed Chinese companies between 2001 and 2009, we find that both state ownership and political connections have significant but separated impacts on SOEs’ performance. In general, SOEs have lower profitability, higher labor redundancy and higher tax burden than non-SOEs. Within SOEs, those affiliated with higher level of governments and more concentrated state shareholders have lower capital cost, tax burden, and labor redundancy.

Bio:

Yu ZHENG is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. degree from University of California, San Diego in 2007. He is the author of Governance and Foreign Investment in China, India, and Taiwan: Credibility of Flexibility and International Business (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). His work has also appeared in Comparative Politics, International Interactions, Journal of East Asian Studies, Public Opinion Quarterly, and others. He is a recipient of the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Associate-in-Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.

郑宇博士毕业于加州大学圣迭戈分校，现为康涅狄格大学政治学助理教授和哈佛大学费正清中心客座研究员。主要研究领域为国际投资，制度环境，和企业治理的国际比较。他的学术专著Governance and Foreign Investment in China, India, and Taiwan: Credibility, Flexibility, and International Business 即将由密歇根大学出版社出版。他曾在Comparative Politics, International Interactions, Journal of East Asian Studies, Public Opinion Quarterly等期刊发表论文。

请同学们准时参加，谢谢！