When is State Capitalism More Sustainable? Minority State Ownership and Environmental Performance

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 12784
Author(s):  
Pete Tashman ◽  
Addis Gedefaw Birhanu ◽  
Tatiana Kostova ◽  
Marc Van Essen ◽  
Steve Sauerwald

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-334
Author(s):  
Leonardo Borlini

AbstractState-owned enterprises (SOEs) have long constituted, and are likely to remain, an important instrument in any government’s toolbox for a variety of economic and societal goals. However, the significant extent of state ownership among the world’s top companies, and the quantitative and qualitative transformation and hybrid nature of SOEs, raises the issue of their impact on international trade flows and the competitive process. This article addresses the question of how international trade agreements regulate SOEs, with a view to furthering the international contestability of markets, while, at the same time, allowing governments to provide support to SOEs as a means of dealing with market failures and the pursuit of public goals. After a brief introduction to contemporary state capitalism, the argument is developed in three main parts. The first part situates SOEs within the GATT and WTO frameworks and elaborates on the findings of previous literature with a view to highlighting the main shortcomings of such discipline. The second part re-examines the notion of ‘competitive neutrality’ by locating contemporary trade agreements within the larger contextual relationships between the state, the market, and the social, and thus reconstructs the normative rationales and general policy implications of the disciplines under examination. Against this background, the third part critically assesses the new disciplines on SOEs in recent preferential trading areas (PTAs). The main conclusion is that the search for binding rules has not led to balanced regimes and, despite the wider scope of the new rules, notable problems that have emerged within the WTO context remain unsolved.



Author(s):  
Hongtao Shen ◽  
Huiying Wu ◽  
Wenbin Long ◽  
Le Luo

This study examines whether better environmental performance of a firm facilitates its access to bank loans in China and how state ownership and regional environmental pollution moderate this relationship. Using a sample of Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2015, we find that better environmental performance is associated with greater access to bank loans, which is consistent with the predictions of risk-management theory. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between environmental performance and access to bank loans is weakened for state-owned firms and strengthened for firms operating in the regions with higher environmental pollution, suggesting that institutional factors play an important role when banks make lending decisions. Our results have implications for managers, policymakers, and banks in the transition to a green economy.



2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis J Milhaupt

Abstract This essay explores China’s experience with state ownership of business enterprise. After a short historical survey of the rise, fall, and re-emergence of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) as a form of business organization, the essay examines the creation, ownership structure, and role of SOEs under Chinese state capitalism. It further discusses the government’s ongoing efforts to reform its SOEs. These efforts are illuminating because they highlight the serious tension inherent in the party-state’s dual goals of maintaining SOEs as a tool for advancing non-financial social and industrial policy objectives, and addressing the corporate governance challenges of these enterprises. The essay concludes by examining implications from the preceding analysis—for China’s domestic economy, for policy-makers outside China, and for the corporate form itself.





2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (827) ◽  
pp. 207-213
Author(s):  
Margaret Pearson ◽  
Meg Rithmire ◽  
Kellee S. Tsai

China’s economic model, commonly described as “state capitalist,” is now better characterized as party-state capitalism, in which the political survival of the Communist Party trumps developmental goals. Its tools for managing the economy include not only state ownership and market interventions, but increasing use of party-state power to discipline private capital. China’s entrepreneurs are now expected to adhere to the party line, as are foreign corporations operating in the country. The shift is fueling a backlash from foreign governments that view the fusion of state and private interests in China as a threat to their own national security.



2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110481
Author(s):  
Neil McGregor ◽  
Neil M. Coe

This paper explores the intersections and overlaps between state capitalism and global production networks. A key feature of the so-called new state capitalism is the combination of state ownership and corporatisation, which creates a system that can be characterised as a hybrid of public–private governance in both corporate and network terms. Moreover, the internationalisation of state hybrids adds an extraterritorial dimension to the state, which can influence the configuration and governance of global production networks. This paper develops a conceptual framework (H–E–N) that foregrounds the relationships between hybrid governance (H), extraterritoriality (E) and global production network configurations (N), thereby promoting an integrated analysis of the implications of the new state capitalism for global production networks. This framework is mobilised to explain how state capitalism in Singapore has influenced the development of the city-state's position in upstream, midstream and downstream oil global production networks over the 1959–2019 period. The study demonstrates that hybrid governance, as part of a wider strategy of state capitalism, has been critical in the development of Singapore's position in oil global production networks. The hybrid nature of the institutional forms associated with state ownership – for instance state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds – goes beyond market facilitation to encompass active state participation in markets. Hybrid governance not only allows the state to influence domestic outcomes but – through the extraterritorial strategies of hybrid entities – can also influence global production network configurations beyond its borders.



Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky

This book argued that the evolution of domestic regimes in the twentieth century was shaped by cross-border institutional waves—sudden bursts of domestic reforms, most prominently of democracy but also of fascism and communism. The major source of institutional waves was a specific type of systemic volatility in the form of hegemonic shocks. This chapter examines the argument's consequences for today's global order. Since the mid-1990s, democratization seems to have reached a Great Plateau. For some observers, democratic capitalism is in the process of being supplanted by state capitalism—a rival regime embodied by China and characterized by a capitalist system of production combined with state ownership and guidance. The chapter examines China's potential rise from the historical perspective of shocks and waves, and ends by discussing the argument's broader implications for democracy and the global order.





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