【摘要】 地区市场分割对经济效率的影响不容忽视。文章通过分析企业集团的跨地区经营行为,研究了我国地区市场分割形成的管制租值及其耗散过程。管制下的地区市场分割固然增加了企业的交易成本,但如果企业能通过设立异地子公司突破这种管制,就可以在商品市场竞争中获得超额收益。实证结果表明,通过在市场分割程度高的地区设立异地子公司,企业集团能够扩大销售规模、提升毛利率,但需要承担额外的非生产性支出和税负,总体上能够改善经营业绩。进一步研究发现,与国有企业相比,民营企业集团克服市场分割更能提升经营业绩;在竞争程度高的行业中,企业集团克服市场分割更能提升经营业绩。因此,企业的竞争性寻租行为是地区市场分割造成经济效率损失的一条重要路径,消除地方保护主义有助于促进企业和经济的良性发展。更多还原

【Abstract】 By examining the trans-regional operation of Chinese business groups,this paper studies the rent formed by regional market segmentation and its dissipation process. For local interests,Chinese local governments restrict inter-regional circulation of resources,and thus create regional market segmentation.Nowadays,the Chinese market is becoming increasingly integrated,but the problem of segmentation still cannot be ignored. Prior studies show that regional market segmentation forms barriers and brings costs to firms,so in pursuit of long-term development,firms have to resort to export trade while avoiding domestic markets.However,in practice,trans-regional operation is fairly common for firms. Although market segmentation entails huge costs,firms enter regional markets in various ways. What are firms’ benefits from trans-regional operation? Where do these benefits come from? These are the main research questions of this paper.We believe that regional market segmentation caused by local governments increases the transaction costs that firms bear,hence non-exclusive rents are formed. Firms can realize abnormal returns in the commodity market if they can avoid regulation related to market segmentation. For business groups,remote subsidiaries help to co-ordinate the interests of local governments and the groups,so it is probably a low-cost approach to overcome market segmentation. With market accesses acquired through remote subsidiaries,business groups can lower the costs of goods sold,approach the market,expand sales and eventually increase profits,but in the meantime,the groups need to pay rent-seeking costs such as non-productive expenditures and extra taxes to establish and maintain remote subsidiaries.To empirically test the benefits and costs of overcoming market segmentation,we first calculate the interprovincial degree of market segmentation using the relative price method,and then business groups’ degree of overcoming market segmentation. Empirical results show that business groups that overcome market segmentation enjoy larger sales volume and higher gross profit margin,but need to invest in more non-productive expenditures and pay more taxes. Their financial performances are improved on the whole. In further analyses,we show that state-owned groups are less motivated to participate in rent-seeking competition,so by overcoming market segmentation,the performances of private business groups improve more than those of state-owned business groups. Fierce competition drives producers’ surplus to zero,so the fiercer the market competition is,the more improvements are there in the groups’ financial performances after overcoming market segmentation.To address the potential endogeneity problem,we examine the impacts of entrance into and exit from segmented markets on business groups’ financial performance.This paper contributes to market segmentation literature by revealing the micro-level mechanism of the efficiency loss. Specifically,firms need to pay non-productive expenditures and extra taxes to gain rents formed by market segmentation. Therefore,eliminating local protectionism would advance the benign development of both firms and the overall economy. Additionally,this paper supplements the literature related to business groups with an in-depth analysis on the benefits and costs of trans-regional operation,and references for business decisions are provided.更多还原