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| Zombie Firms, Credit Constraints, and Exports Upgrading in China |
| XU Jiayun, FANG Senhui, MAO Qilin
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APEC Study Center, Nankai University;
Center for Transnationals' Studies, Nankai University |
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Abstract Zombie firms usually pose huge economic and social risks, and they are a stumbling block that restricts the quality and efficiency of a country or region's economy. As China's economy enters the “new normal”, economic growth is slowing, and downward pressure is increasing, the danger of zombie firms is expected to become increasingly prominent. The Chinese government and related departments attach great importance to the problem of zombie firms and have introduced supporting measures to dispose of them. Undoubtedly, the disposal of zombie firms is an important element in promoting the market allocation of factors and optimizing the business environment, and the effective disposal of zombie firms is an important tool to eliminate ineffective supply and promote high-quality economic development. During its 40 years of reform and opening up, China has actively participated in the international cycle and integrated into the international division of labor system with comparative advantages such as labor costs and policy dividends, achieving rapid growth in its scale of exports and thus creating a historical miracle in the area of foreign trade development. However, although China's export trade has grown rapidly, the quality of its exports has improved to a very limited extent and has even declined in individual sectors. According to China's developmental stage and changing environmental conditions, the report of the 20th Party Congress proposes to “enhance the endogenous power and reliability of the domestic cycle and upgrade the quality and level of the international cycle”. The upgrading of manufacturing exports is an important manifestation of the quality and level of the international cycle. We provide possible explanations for the lagging phenomenon of China's manufacturing export upgrading from the perspective of zombie firms, and new ideas for effectively improving the quality and level of China's international circulation in the new era of opening up. All of this work has important theoretical value and practical significance.
First, we theoretically describe the micro-mechanisms through which zombie firms affect non-zombie firms' export upgrading. Second, we conduct an empirical study using Chinese firm-level micro data. We have three main findings to report. First, zombie firms significantly inhibit the export upgrading of non-zombie firms (i.e., normal firms). Second, our mechanism tests show that zombie firms significantly increase the degree of credit constraints of non-zombie firms, and this increase in credit constraints is an important channel through which zombie firms inhibit the export upgrading of non-zombie firms. This inhibitory effect is greater in industries with a higher reliance on external financing. Third, the inhibitory effect of zombie firms on the export upgrading of private and ordinary trade firms is relatively large, and in addition, the inhibitory effect of zombie firms on the export upgrading of non-zombie firms diminishes with improvement of the regional institutional environment.
Our paper makes the following three contributions. First, it is the first to systematically explore the effect of zombie firms on China's manufacturing export upgrading using the latest microdata, thus enriching and expanding the literature on the economic effects of zombie firms in the Chinese context to some extent. Second, this paper enriches the literature on the determinants of export upgrading of Chinese firms to some extent. Most of the literature focuses on the drivers of firms' export upgrading, whereas research on the “negative factors” that may hinder export upgrading is relatively limited. Our study provides a novel explanation for the long-standing phenomenon of relative lag in China's manufacturing export upgrading. Third, this paper systematically investigates the transmission mechanism of zombie firms effects on China's manufacturing export upgrading from the perspective of credit constraints. This approach not only deepens the understanding of the intrinsic relationship between zombie firms and manufacturing export upgrading but also provides a new explanation for the credit constraint problem commonly faced by Chinese firms.
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Received: 21 April 2022
Published: 02 July 2023
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