Research on the Regional Variation of China''s State-owned Enterprises
中国国有企业生产效率的区域差异

Drawing insights from theories of new regionalism and firm-region nexus in new economic geography, this paper analyzes empirically the regional variation of China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs hereafter).It reveals significant internal differentiation among China's state-owned sectors.Viewed at provincial level, SOEs in North and Northeast China were much larger and bigger than those in East and Southeast China, while their productive efficiency was greatly lagged behind by the latter.It is further found at municipal level that there emerges a trend of spatial concentration of highly productive SOEs toward coastal metropolitan areas.Statistical tests suggest that locally-specific traded and untraded interdependence is an important regional factor affecting the productive efficiency of SOEs.Specifically, SOEs with more local production and market linkages were more likely to benefit from external economies and achieve higher productive efficiency.Higher degree of diversification in local labor market allowed SOEs therein to adopt more flexible methods in labor management which was beneficial to their efficiency improvement.More untraded interdependence with foreign enterprises can facilitate SOEs to learn and adopt effective organizational structure and help them to improve productive efficiency.