Research On Industrial Concentration Of The Western Coal And Its Influencing Factors

Coal is an important part of China’s energy. The west coal dominates our energy due tothe coal regional distribution in China. In recent years, the west coal industry has achievedrapid development, promoting Chinese industrialization construction and ensuringcompetitive position of Chinese coal industry in the world’s energy. But in development ofChinese coal industry, there are many problems, such as low industrial concentration, smalland medium-sized coal enterprises scattered, too little large-scale coal enterprises, a typicalcompetitive market structure of the whole industry, etc. This paper provides a research theoryto solve these problems effectively and realize the benign development of coal industry,which has important practical significance.In this paper, the values of concentration degree of western coal industries are computedand analyzed based on time-series data from2003to2010, using the related theory ofindustrial organization, combining with the distribution characteristics and policy system ofthe western coal resources, raw coal production quantity, and the trend of mine type and thequantity change. Then, by using grey relational theory, this paper analyses the grey relationaldegree between the western coal industry concentration and the related factors, includinginitial concentration, production expansion ability, barriers to entry, market capacity. Theresult indicates that initial concentration and market capacity are the two most important keyfactors to affect the western coal industry concentration. Secondly, considering the lags of thedata collection in the above analysis, this paper establishes the grey forecasting model ofwestern coal industrial concentration and predicts the western coal industry concentrationfrom2011to2013. The results show that the value of predicted concentration has a graduallyincreasing trend, though the value a little relatively low. This trend agrees well with the coalpolicy objectives in the western region, which indicates that the western coal industry policyworks well and the industrial structure has been optimized gradually. Finally, on basis of the above research, this paper proposed some suggestions for the policy to improve the westerncoal industrial concentration and optimize the industrial organization further.