Deregulation as a Source of China’s Economic Growth

We develop a two-sector growth model of vertical structure in which the upstream sector features Cournot competition and produces intermediate goods that are used in the downstream sector for the production of final goods. In such a vertical structure, we show that deregulation and increased market competition in the upstream sector does not only increase its own productivity, but also has a substantial spill-over effect on the productivity of the downstream sector through affecting factor prices. We calibrate the model to the Chinese economy and use the calibrated model to quantitatively evaluate the extent to which deregulation in the upstream market in China from 1998 to 2007 accounts for the rapid economic growth over the same period. Our quantitative experiments suggest that deregulation in the upstream market in China from 1998 to 2007 can account for a significant fraction of China’s economic growth during this period partly due to the significant spillover effect it has on the downstream sector. In addition, our model can also match several relevant observations in China during the same period including high and rising returns to capital, declining markups.