Industrial Land Listings And TFP Of Firms

With the advancement of China’s industrialization and urbanization,the demand for various production factors has gradually been released.As a critical production factor in the region,land is managed by local governments to achieve urban management and further promote local economic development.In the process of competition for growth,land factors play a critical role.This is mainly due to the fact that after the tax-sharing system reform,the supply of urban land has been monopolized by local governments.Local governments control the allocation of urban land by controlling its transfer,thereby promoting regional economic growth.In the open land transfer market,local governments control the scale of land transfer and select specific land transfer objects by adopting specific transfer methods.After the market-oriented reform of the land transfer system,local governments can only transfer industrial land through bidding.As the local government can flexibly set thresholds and implement regulation during the bidding process,it has become the most preferred way for local governments to transfer industrial land.This thesis first selects and summarizes relevant literature on the allocation and listing of industrial land and the total factor productivity of enterprises.It elaborates in detail on the endogenous motivation,reasons,and negative effects caused by local governments’ allocation of industrial land.It introduces and summarizes the listing process and its intervention characteristics,and explains the influencing factors of total factor productivity of enterprises.Subsequently,from the perspectives of labor cost,employee scale,and enterprise profitability,it focuses on the causal impact of the listing of industrial land on the total factor productivity of enterprises.Finally,using data from the Chinese industrial enterprise database and land allocation data from 2007 to 2013,it empirically tests the inhibitory effect of the listing of industrial land on the total factor productivity of enterprises by constructing a panel data model.Research has found that:(1)the larger the proportion of industrial land sold through public bidding in a county,the greater the inhibitory effect on the total factor productivity(TFP)of industrial enterprises in the area.This conclusion has been robustly tested through a series of checks,including the two-stage estimation using the interaction term of land slope and economic growth target as instrumental variables.(2)This inhibitory effect is strengthened in enterprises in the central and western regions,those far away from provincial capital cities,those with low productivity,and those that are non-state-owned and collective enterprises.(3)Mechanism analysis shows that the public bidding of industrial land will reduce the TFP growth of enterprises through three channels: labor expansion effect,labor cost reduction effect,and profit contraction effect.(4)Using the TFP dispersion degree of enterprises as a proxy variable for the degree of regional resource allocation,the study further analyzes the impact of public bidding on the allocation of regional resources.The results show that public bidding of industrial land is not conducive to the effective allocation of local resources,exacerbating the degree of mismatch of local resources.Based on the above conclusions,this thesis proposes the following suggestions:(1)further promote the market-oriented reform of the land transfer system and adopt targeted dynamic regulatory measures to reduce the proportion of local governments choosing the listing method.(2)Try to establish a vertically-managed land transfer effect evaluation mechanism to protect low-productivity enterprises from abnormal interference by local governments,and provide fair and orderly business environment and close government-business relations to non-state-owned and collective enterprises.(3)Gradually reform the assessment mechanism and continue to reduce the weight of Gross Domestic Product(GDP)scale and growth rate in the government assessment system,which will fundamentally suppress the impulse of local governments to transfer land.(4)Enterprises can respond to the impact of government listing and transfer by merging,integrating or using land jointly with other enterprises to share the land costs and reduce business risks.