Effects of Deregulation and Vertical Unbundling on the Performance of China's Electricity Generation Sector

We study whether the 2002 deregulation and vertical unbundling of the Chinese electricity sector has boosted productivity in the generation segment of the industry. Controlling explicitly for sources of price-heterogeneity across firms and for firm-fixed effects, we find deregulation to be associated with a reduction in labor input and material use of 6 and 4 percent, respectively. This effect only appears two years after the reforms, is robust to alternative ways of identifying restructured firms, and to the nonrandom selection of restructured firms using a matching estimator. Input use of new state-owned firms that start operations two years into the reform period does not differ significantly anymore from input use of private sector entrants.