From a dataset of Chinese firms in the 2005-07 period, we find that government investment boosted the performance of zombie firms and crowded out the growth of private firms; and that the higher the concentration of state banks, and of SOEs, the more conducive is the environment for nurturing...

Employing the news-based economic policy uncertainty (EPU) Index of Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016) and quarterly data of Chinese listed companies, we find that an increase in EPU raises the average debt-to-asset ratio of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but lowers that of private-owned enterprises...