Industrial Specialization in China: Effects of Central Tools Governing Subnational Agency

Dan Prud'homme and Wenlong He

Management and Organization Review, 2024, vol. 20, issue 4, 671-694

Abstract: We examine how the central government's management of subnational governments' agency influences the smartness of the latter's industrial specialization choices. Based on smart industrial specialization theory and agency theory, we hypothesize how two central government tools governing subnational governments' agency – facilitating their organizational efficacy and promoting their officials to higher ranks – explain recent industrial specialization choices by China's 31 provincial governments. We find that provincial governments with greater organizational efficacy, measured by access to better-resourced local state-owned enterprises in focal industries, make smarter specialization policies. In addition, we show that provincial governments with greater numbers of officials previously promoted to the central government make, contrary to conventional wisdom, potentially less smart specialization policies. Our research extends smart specialization theory by explaining that central government tools governing subnational agency problems can have knock-on effects making subnational governments' industrial specialization choices smart or unsmart.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:maorev:v:20:y:2024:i:4:p:671-694_7

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management and Organization Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().