China's anti-corruption shock and resource reallocation in the energy industry

摘要

This paper explores the impact of anti-corruption on productivity and resource reallocation in China's energy industry. Using staggered anti-corruption investigations as exogenous shocks, we construct a quasi-natural experiment to identify causality. We find that China's anti-corruption shock improves the total factor productivity (TFP) of energy firms by 2.5%, and the impact is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) compared to non-SOEs. The mechanisms through which anti-corruption increases SOEs' TFP is to increase investment efficiency, improve corporate governance, and increase innovation outputs. Government subsidies and financial facilities are more efficiently allocated after China's anti-corruption shock.(c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.