Technological progress and industrial performance: A case study of solar photovoltaic industry

In order to find out the driving factors that affect the performance of PV industry in China, this article analyzes the panel data of 17 photovoltaic cells enterprise from 2008 to 2014. The total factor productivity growth is decomposed to test the performance of the photovoltaic industry and the level of technological progress. The empirical results show that the growth in output of Chinese PV industry mainly relies on technological progress, while the relative frontier technology efficiency does not change with time, and the allocation efficiency and scale economy function contributes little to the change of total factor productivity. Analysis shows that the way to obtain the future development of China PV industry is to rely on technological progress and market competition mechanism.