Which types of institutions hinder productivity among private manufacturing firms in China?

•We find only property rights institutions matter to firm productivity in China.•We use a set of instruments to address the possible endogeneity issues.•It lends micro-level support to the story of Acemoglu and Johnson (2005).•It suggests that improving institutions disproportionately benefits small firms.•It strengthens Cull and Xu (2005) and Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Maksimovic (2005).

Property rights institutions significantly hinder firm productivity but not contracting institutions in China. Weakening property rights institutions by a standard deviation lowers firm productivity by 34.4% of its corresponding standard deviation. Small firms find weak property rights institutions more challenging than big firms do. We address endogeneity using instruments that are both relevant and separable. The results lend micro-level support to the explanation of country-level evidence given in Acemoglu and Johnson (2005), that individuals may get around weak contracting institutions by altering the contract terms but find it harder to mitigate the risk of expropriation.