IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceps/v44y2010i4p178-192.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Entrepreneurial talent and economic development in China

Author

Listed:
  • Zhang, Weiying
  • Cooper, W.W.
  • Deng, Honghui
  • Parker, Barnett R.
  • Ruefli, Timothy W.

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the economic miracle of China in the past three decades can be attributed to the reallocation of entrepreneurial talent from the government/state and agricultural sectors to business activities. This change is unprecedented in the past two thousand years of Chinese history. When entrepreneurial talent was moved more to business activities, it created wealth, and the economy boomed. Three dominant groups of entrepreneurs are identified: (1) Peasants-turned entrepreneurs, (2) officials-turned entrepreneurs, and (3) overseas-returned, and engineers-turned, entrepreneurs. They have emerged sequentially, and successively led three decades of economic growth. The success of the Chinese economy arises from a gradual replacement of position-based rights with property-based rights that has triggered this reallocation of entrepreneurial talent. We also argue that when position-based and property-based rights coexist, value-creating and rent-seeking can be complementary. Therefore, one should not be puzzled by the coexistence of rapid economic growth and pervasive corruption in China. In order to improve the efficiency of allocation of entrepreneurial talent and efforts, it is important to further reduce the domain of position-based rights, and build a better-defined and more effectively-protected property rights system.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhang, Weiying & Cooper, W.W. & Deng, Honghui & Parker, Barnett R. & Ruefli, Timothy W., 2010. "Entrepreneurial talent and economic development in China," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 178-192, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceps:v:44:y:2010:i:4:p:178-192
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038-0121(10)00015-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1993. "Corruption," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 599-617.
    2. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    3. Milo Bianchi, 2010. "Credit constraints, entrepreneurial talent, and economic development," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 93-104, January.
    4. Martin L. Weitzman & Chenggang Xu, 1997. "Chinese Township-Village Enterprises as Vaguely Defined Cooperatives," International Economic Association Series, in: John E. Roemer (ed.), Property Relations, Incentives and Welfare, chapter 12, pages 326-355, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    6. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn.
    7. Gollin, Douglas, 2008. "Nobody's business but my own: Self-employment and small enterprise in economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 219-233, March.
    8. Wu, Desheng(Dash) & Liang, Liang & Yang, Zijiang, 2008. "Analyzing the financial distress of Chinese public companies using probabilistic neural networks and multivariate discriminate analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 206-220, September.
    9. Gary Akehurst & José Comeche & Miguel-Angel Galindo, 2009. "Job satisfaction and commitment in the entrepreneurial SME," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 277-289, March.
    10. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2008. "What Is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 3-28, Spring.
    11. Adler, Nicole & Yazhemsky, Ekaterina & Tarverdyan, Ruzanana, 2010. "A framework to measure the relative socio-economic performance of developing countries," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 73-88, June.
    12. Zhang, Weiying, 1998. "A Principal-Agent Theory of the Public Economy and Its Applications to China," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 31(2-3), pages 231-251.
    13. Sherwin Rosen, 1982. "Authority, Control, and the Distribution of Earnings," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 311-323, Autumn.
    14. Ghatak, Maitreesh & Morelli, Massimo & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2007. "Entrepreneurial talent, occupational choice, and trickle up policies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 27-48, November.
    15. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5381 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Li, Shaomin & Li, Shuhe & Zhang, Weiying, 2000. "The Road to Capitalism: Competition and Institutional Change in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 269-292, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William T. Allen & Han Shen, 2011. "Assessing China's Top-Down Securities Markets," NBER Working Papers 16713, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Lu Liu & Shenshen Si & Jing Li, 2023. "Research on the Effect of Regional Talent Allocation on High-Quality Economic Development—Based on the Perspective of Innovation-Driven Growth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-21, April.
    3. Yong He & Siwei Gao & Nuo Liao, 2016. "An Intelligent Computing Approach to Evaluating the Contribution Rate of Talent on Economic Growth," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 48(3), pages 399-423, October.
    4. Mayer-Haug, Katrin & Read, Stuart & Brinckmann, Jan & Dew, Nicholas & Grichnik, Dietmar, 2013. "Entrepreneurial talent and venture performance: A meta-analytic investigation of SMEs," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1251-1273.
    5. Ju, Xiangui & Ferreira, Fernando A.F. & Wang, Min, 2020. "Innovation, agile project management and firm performance in a public sector-dominated economy: Empirical evidence from high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises in China," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    6. William T. Allen & Han Shen, 2012. "Assessing China's Top-Down Securities Markets," NBER Chapters, in: Capitalizing China, pages 149-195, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Robertson, Jeandri & Pitt, Leyland & Ferreira, Caitlin, 2020. "Entrepreneurial ecosystems and the public sector: A bibliographic analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krishna B. Kumar & Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, "undated". "What Determines Firm Size?," CRSP working papers 496, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    2. Luis Medrano-Adán & Vicente Salas-Fumás & J. Sanchez-Asin, 2015. "Heterogeneous entrepreneurs from occupational choices in economies with minimum wages," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 597-619, March.
    3. Pedro Gomes & Zoe Kuehn, 2017. "Human capital and the size distribution of firms," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 164-179, October.
    4. Holmstrom, Bengt R. & Tirole, Jean, 1989. "The theory of the firm," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-133, Elsevier.
    5. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 2001. "The Firm as a Dedicated Hierarchy: A Theory of the Origins and Growth of Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 805-851.
    6. Milo Bianchi, 2010. "Credit constraints, entrepreneurial talent, and economic development," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 93-104, January.
    7. Gianluigi Giustiziero, 2021. "Is the division of labor limited by the extent of the market? Opportunity cost theory with evidence from the real estate brokerage industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(7), pages 1344-1378, July.
    8. Luis Medrano-Adán & Vicente Salas-Fumás & J. Javier Sanchez-Asin, 2019. "Firm size and productivity from occupational choices," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 243-267, June.
    9. Vicente Salas-Fumás & J. Sanchez-Asin & David Storey, 2014. "Occupational choice, number of entrepreneurs and output: theory and empirical evidence with Spanish data," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, March.
    10. Rui Baptista & Francisco Lima & Miguel Preto, 2013. "Entrepreneurial skills and workers’ wages in small firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 309-323, February.
    11. Joanna Georgios Alexopoulos & Anne Villamil, 2014. "The Effects Of Frictions In The Labormarket On Entrepreneurship And Economic Development," Anais do XL Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 40th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 045, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    12. Luis Garicano & Thomas N. Hubbard, 2016. "The Returns to Knowledge Hierarchies," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 653-684.
    13. Brian McCaig & Nina Pavcnik, 2015. "Informal Employment in a Growing and Globalizing Low-Income Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 545-550, May.
    14. Robert W. Fairlie & Christopher Woodruff, 2007. "Mexican Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment in Mexico and the United States," NBER Chapters, in: Mexican Immigration to the United States, pages 123-158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Luc Laeven & Christopher Woodruff, 2007. "The Quality of the Legal System, Firm Ownership, and Firm Size," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 601-614, November.
    16. Greene, William H. & Hornstein, Abigail S. & White, Lawrence J., 2009. "Multinationals do it better: Evidence on the efficiency of corporations' capital budgeting," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 703-720, December.
    17. Allub, Lian & Erosa, Andrés, 2019. "Financial frictions, occupational choice and economic inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 63-76.
    18. Garicano, Luis & Hubbard, Thomas N, 2007. "Managerial Leverage Is Limited by the Extent of the Market: Hierarchies, Specialization, and the Utilization of Lawyers' Human Capital," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(1), pages 1-43, February.
    19. Barseghyan, Levon & DiCecio, Riccardo, 2011. "Entry costs, industry structure, and cross-country income and TFP differences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(5), pages 1828-1851, September.
    20. Sampson, Thomas, 2013. "Brain drain or brain gain? Technology diffusion and learning on-the-job," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 162-176.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceps:v:44:y:2010:i:4:p:178-192. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/seps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.