This paper studies differences in the internal configuration and productivity in vertically integrated steel facilities in China using equipment-level information on inputs and output for each of the main stages in the value chain. At the facility level, we do not find statistically significant differences in productivity by ownership. This conceals important differences in the value chain: private firms outperform in pig iron...
Our recent research finds that provincial credit market development, through improving credit allocation, enhances firms’ product innovation incentives and outcomes in the People’s Republic of China. We further show that firms’ credit constraints and performance are two channels through which credit market development affects the innovative capacities of firms. We suggest that in order to further promote firms’ innovations, China should encourage financial institutions to actively screen those firms who have good performance but face credit constraints.
The Chinese government has occasionally suspended IPOs, exogenously creating uncertainty about access to public markets for firms already approved to list. We show that suspension-induced delay reduces corporate innovation activity both during the delay and for years after listing.
To examine the implicit guarantee provided by Chinese local governments to local government financing vehicles (LGFV), we create a proxy for local governments’ implicit debt ratio and find it correlated with the credit spread of LGFV bonds.
The use of massive amounts of data by large technology firms (big techs) to assess firms’ creditworthiness could reduce the need for collateral in credit markets. Using a unique dataset of more than 2 million Chinese firms that received credit from both an important big tech firm (Ant Group) and traditional commercial banks, we find that a greater use of big tech...