Focusing on the Chinese health industry: an empirical enquiry on the TCM listed firms. Is large and private beautiful?

Abstract

TCM is a key part of the Chinese healthcare system and TCM industries might play a growing role in the domestic and international markets. This work focuses on TCM listed companies in China. In particular, we study the effect of ownership and size on corporate performance. Multivariate permutation tests on the effects of ownership and size on corporate performance show that among the TCM listed companies, private companies perform better than state-owned ones, while big companies perform better than small ones. Moreover, the study shows that in TCM industry ownership has stronger effects than size on corporate performance.