ABSTRACT

Motivated by the rise of state capitalism, the paper investigates the relationship between ownership identity and the performance of firms in terms of profitability and solvency. Using cross-sectional data covering over 25,000 firms worldwide and by employing various empirical methods, we find robust evidence that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) tend to be less profitable than private-owned enterprises. However, they appear to use debt for their financial need and are, thus, better leveraged. SOEs are also more labor-intensive and have higher labor costs. In addition, an improvement in institutional quality could benefit both SOEs and POEs. Thus, evidence from this study could be interpreted to mean that privatization could improve the performance of public firms; however, this process should come with several prior-privatization approaches. A study over a more extended period is needed before these results can be considered conclusive.

摘要

受国家资本主义兴起的推动，本文研究了所有权身份与公司在盈利能力和偿付能力方面的绩效之间的关系。使用涵盖全球 25,000 多家公司的横截面数据并采用各种实证方法，我们发现强有力的证据表明，国有企业 (SOE) 的利润往往低于私营企业。然而，他们似乎使用债务来满足他们的财务需求，因此杠杆率更高。国有企业也更加劳动密集，劳动力成本更高。此外，制度质量的提高对国有企业和民营企业都有好处。因此，这项研究的证据可以解释为私有化可以提高上市公司的绩效；然而，这个过程应该伴随着几种事先私有化的方法。