岭南观点·35 商事制度改革与产业结构变迁：微观视角

我院毕青苗博士后、徐现祥教授、陈希路博士后与佛山科学技术学院朱奕蒙博士合作的论文《商事制度改革与产业结构变迁：微观视角》于2022年1月在经济学中文顶级期刊《经济研究》发表。

第三产业占比上升是一个广泛存在的现象。关注产业结构变迁的文献大都是从宏观视角展开的，并将其原因归纳为恩格尔效应和鲍莫尔效应等。不过，产业结构变迁是企业微观行为的宏观表现，还需要从微观视角进一步探索。

从微观的视角来看，近年来，一个可以观察到的新现象是，新进入第三产业的企业数量激增，推动了三产占比快速提升。具体而言，在2002-2012年间，不论是所有企业中的第三产业企业数量占比、还是新增企业中的第三产业企业数量占比，都基本保持不变；但2012年之后，新增企业中的第三产业企业数量占比从2012年的71.2%提升至2019年的79.6%，增加了8.4个百分点。相应地，第三产业增加值占比和就业人数占比分别上升了8.8个百分点和11.3个百分点。

本文认为，2012年开始实施的商事制度改革可能是解释进入第三产业企业数量占比大幅提升的原因之一。党的十八大以来，商事制度改革从制约百姓投资兴办企业的第一道门槛改起，持续放宽市场准入、创新市场监管，是近年来企业准入环节最为重要的制度变迁。根据全球营商环境调查报告，我国开办企业的步骤已经从2013年的11步缩短至2019年的4步，耗时从2013年的32天缩短至2019年的8.6天。

基于此，在理论上，本文尝试把商事制度改革引入Melitz（2003）的模型，以准入成本的降低刻画市场准入办事门槛的下降，证明了市场准入办事门槛降低将对资本密集度不同的行业产生异质性的影响。具体而言，商事制度改革降低市场准入门槛将促使更多新企业进入资本密集度较低的产业。因此，商事制度改革具有结构效应。

在实证上，本文主要采用开办企业的办证度量市场准入办事门槛。从商事制度改革的实践看，改革不断深化“证”“照”功能关系，先后推出了“先照后证”、“三证合一”、“五证合一”、“多证合一”等典型的“减证”措施，办证个数的多少代表了企业开办时面临办事门槛的高低。另外，本文还使用企业办证耗时、企业注册耗时等度量办事门槛。数据来自作者团队的全国实地调研。具体而言，在2018年和2019年，赴全国24个省、110个市进行了两轮实地调研，在政务服务中心随机访谈前来办理业务的企业代表，成功访谈并收集9654份样本。

基于一手实地调研数据，本文发现，与理论模型的预期一致，商事制度改革降低市场准入办事门槛、促使更多新企业进入第三产业，具有结构效应。具体而言，企业办证个数每减少1个，进入第三产业的企业占比增加约0.5个百分点；注册耗时和办证耗时每缩短1%将使得进入第三产业的企业占比分别增加约0.6和0.4个百分点。

另外，本文还识别出商事制度改革结构效应的一些特征。比如，在行业上，改革主要影响消费性服务业；在时间上，改革主要影响企业生命周期最初的1至3年；在程度上，结构效应随着办事门槛降低而递减等。

本文的工作揭示了，产业结构变迁具有坚实的微观基础，商事制度改革为产业结构变迁注入了巨大的微观活力。不过，从微观视角看，产业结构变迁既要大量新企业的便利进入，又要在位企业的高质量成长。本文主要是考察了前者，后者显然值得进一步研究。

We find that the commercial system reform, starting from 2012 and aiming to facilitate market entities byimproving the efficiency of government services，maypartially explain the recent tertiarization in China. An important component in commercial system reform is market entry deregulation, which includes efforts such as de-licensing, deferringcertain approval items, and simplifying the approvalprocedures. The government first set up pilot programsin some regions and then gradually promoted the actions nationwide. According to the Doing Business Ｒeport byWorld Bank, with the deepening reforms, steps taken to start a business in China have been shortened from 11in 2013 to 4 in 2019, and the time spent has beenshortened from 32 days in 2013 to 8. 6 days in 2019. The number of market entities in China also doubled during the same period，reaching 140 million at the end of 2020．

Theoretically，weintroduce the commercial system reform into the model by Melitz ( 2003) andprove that a reform of lowering the common market entry cost has heterogeneousimpacts on industries with different capital intensities． In our model，the tertiary sector is morelabor-intensive relative to the secondary sector，andthe labor-intensive sector is more sensitive to changes in market entry cost． Therefore，lowering the common market entrycost leads to more entrants into the tertiary sector．

Empirically，we conducted two rounds of field research in 2018 and 2019，collecting questionnaires in 24 provincial regions and 110 citieswithin China． With the 9654 completed questionnaires，we constructed the indexes to measure the thresholds for marketentry，including the number of licenses needed to starta firm，the time spent on licenses，and the time spent on registration． We findthat a lower threshold for market entry after the commercial system reform hasencouraged more firms to enter the tertiary sector，whichis consistent with the predictions in our theoretical model． Specifically，when the number of licensesrequired to start a firm decreases by one，the share ofentrants in the tertiary sector increases by around 0. 5 percentage points． When the time spent on licenses and registration reduces by 1% ，the share of entrants in the tertiary sector increases by 0. 4 and0. 6 percentage points，respectively． These findings are proved to be robust．

We also report four further findings of thestructural effect in this paper. First，the impact of the commercial system reform is heterogeneous evenwithin the tertiary sector. The commercial system reformbetter facilitates the consumer services entrants．Second，the reform affects the age distribution oftertiary firms by increasing the share of firms with an age of fewer than threeyears，indicating that the reform only has a short-termimpact after the firm entry． Third，the lower the market entry thresholds are，thesmaller the size of entrants in the tertiary sector is．Fourth，the marginal impact on firm entrants isdiminishing as the reform deepens. In the last sectionof this paper，we have also empirically verified thetheoretical mechanism that the labor-intensive industry is more sensitive tochanges in the market entry cost．

This paper is also closely related toliterature examining changes in market access institutions． While most existing studies focus on the aggregate effect ofinstitutional change，we focus on the structural effect． Our findings indicate that the commercial system reform greatlyvalidates the structural transformation by releasing idle resources，and a future agenda for reforms to achieve high-quality developmentis to establish further policies on the survival and growth of entrants．

 毕青苗

中山大学岭南学院科研博士后。研究领域为中国经济增长、地方政府改革、商事制度改革。在《经济研究》、《世界经济》等权威期刊发表多篇学术论文。主持国家自然科学基金青年项目和博士后基金面上项目等各类课题。 

 徐现祥

中山大学岭南学院教授。研究领域主要涉及制度与政治经济学、中国经济增长与转型。在地方官员行为、政务服务市场等方面的研究具有开创性，诸多论文发表在一流经济学期刊上，自2018年实地调研全国各地营商环境，出版系列《中国营商环境报告》，在学界产生了广泛影响。

 陈希路