Associate Professor Xiaohang Ren, a Researcher of the Base, has published a collaborative paper titiled "Can government procurement improve capacity utilization in enterprises? Evidence from China"  in the important academic journal Applied Economics.

Applied Economics focuses on analyzing economic issues in public policy and business practice, emphasizing the use of quantitative methods and empirical research to bridge economic theory and practice. It is ranked Q2 in the JCR economics category.

Abstract: The ability of government procurement (GP) to influence capacity utilization (CU) is an issue that needs to be studied to resolve overcapacity. Therefore, we investigate the impact and mechanisms of GP on CU of enterprises by utilizing data from Chinese listed companies’ and GP contracts from 2015 to 2022. Our findings indicate that GP significantly enhances CU, with a more pronounced effect observed in private enterprises, capital-intensive firms, highly competitive industries, and the eastern region. Mechanism analysis reveals that GP improves CU by mitigating supply-demand deviations, reducing uncertainty perception on the consumption side, suppressing inefficient investment, and stimulating technological innovation on the production side. Further analysis demonstrates the synergies between GP and government subsidies vary significantly across different CU levels. Additionally, GP effectively boosts enterprise economic performance. This paper significantly enhances the comprehension of demand-side policies’ impact but also offers a practical and efficient policy approach to tackling China’s overcapacity challenges.

Keywords: Government procurement；capacity utilization；policy synergies；economic performance

Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2025.2464824

Teacher profile

Xiaohang Ren is a Distinguished Associate Professor at the Business School, Central South University, an Elsevier China Highly Cited Researcher, and a Top 2% Scientist Worldwide. He mainly engages in research on energy finance, financial risk, and financial econometrics. He has published more than 100 papers in authoritative journals at home and abroad,including Journal of the American Statistical Association,Transportation Research Part A, Energy Economics, Quantitative Finance, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, International Review of Financial Analysis, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Business Strategy and the Environment, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Applied Energy, Resources Policy, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy, Journal of Management Sciences in China (English Edition), Systems Engineering — Theory and Practice, and Chinese Journal of Management Science. Among these, more than 30 are ESI Hot Papers/Highly Cited Papers. He serves as Section Editor of Sustainable Communities (Taylor & Francis), Associate Editor of journals such as Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (the only humanities and social sciences journal under Nature), and Guest Editor of several SSCI journals including Climate Change Economics and Economic Change and Restructuring.