Cutting Overcapacity, Productivity and the Recovery of Chinese-style “Zombies”: Based on the Evidence of Chinese Industrial Enterprises

作者：Dianfan Yu, Haoyu Sun, Ruixiang Xu · 发表于：Cai-jing yanjiu · 年份：2020 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Firm Innovation and Growth、Energy, Environment, Economic Growth、Innovation Policy and R&D

The disposal method and approach of Chinese-style “zombies” are not only related to the healthy development of China’s economy, but also an important content of the sustainable development of China’s economy in the new era. This paper uses the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database to explore whether Chinese-style “zombies” can recover, and whether capacity compression can promote the recovery of “zombies”. This paper considers the feature of Chinese-style “zombies”, which combines government subsidies and credit subsidies, and combines the CHK method and the over-borrowing method to identify Chinese-style “zombies”. In order to avoid the misidentification of “zombies” to the greatest extent, this paper uses the more rigorous standard in academia to determine the firms that meet the measurement standard of “suspected zombies” in two consecutive periods as “zombies”. Results show that Chinese-style “zombies” are widely distributed, and have a high proportion, high leverage and low productivity. Similarly, based on the strictest identification criteria, a “zombie” can be recognized as recovered if it returns to a normal firm in the current year and all subsequent years. The average annual recovery of more than 20% of the “zombies” shows that these firms can be rejuvenated if appropriate measures are taken. We also find that the fixed assets cleanup and downsizing can significantly promote the recovery of “zombies” by increasing the level of firm productivity. The empirical resu...