The 22nd “Theory and Policy” at RUC NADS

Modern Industrialization and Contemporary Entrepreneurship in China

Speaker：LIN Jianhao

Lingnan College

Moderator：LIU Ruiming

National Academy of Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China

Time：Dec.14, 2018（Friday）15:30-17:00

Venue：Meeting Room 815, Chongde Building West Wing (Keyan Building Block A）

Abstract：

At the end of Qing Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, China’s economic policies ceased suppressing the development of business, but started to attach more importance to business, which accordingly opened up a new chapter in modern industrialization. This paper takes the density of new factories in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty as the proxy variables of the early entrepreneurship in each city. The research results show that the density of industrial enterprises above the contemporary scale has significantly positive correlation with entrepreneurial spirit at the early stage. The differences in the distribution of enterprises have continued for hundreds of years. Among the enterprises, modern private factories played a major role, rather than foreign-funded, government-run or official-supervised factories. Based on the historical background of the rise of modern industry, this paper constructs instrumental variables by the number of small rivers in the city and the distance from the city to the trading port. The result is stable. Furthermore, the use of immigration samples can identify the cultural impacts of the places of origin (or places of birth) on the premise of controlling the influential factors the places of residence. Firstly, using the sample of immigrants in China Laborforce Dynamics Survey (CLDS) at Sun Yat-Sen University in 2016, the study shows that the density of modern private factories in the places of origin has no significant impact on the probability of active entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial income. Instead, what’s influential is the institutions and aggregations of the place where the entrepreneur is located. Secondly, based on the sample of chairmen and general managers of the A-share listed companies from 1999 to 2016, the study shows that the higher the density of modern private factories in the birthplaces of the executives is, the higher the relative salary of the executives is and the more recognized their capability is in the market. On the whole, the business culture formed in the history of cities may be internalized in the individual entrepreneurial spirit. However, it has no significant impact on the initial stage of the individual's entrepreneurship, but affects the entrepreneurial ability in the successful entrepreneurial stage.

Speaker Profile：

Lin Jianhao is a Doctor in Economics and associate professor of Lingnan College. His current research direction is mainly the measurement and diffusion mechanism of the central bank's monetary policy communication, the influence of cultural factors such as dialects, clans, religions and concepts on market entity decision-making, institutional evolution and economic development.