The Impacts of Market Segmentation on Thermal Power Generation Efficiency

China's power industry is in a critical transformation period. The new round of power system reform in 2015 will have a profound impact on China's power industry. Therefore, it's necessary to analyze the influencing factors of thermal power generation efficiency. Based on the thermal power generation industry related data in China's 30 provinces from 2005 to 2017, this paper studies the impacts of market segmentation on thermal power generation efficiency in China. And the empirical result shows that the market segmentation exhibit significant negative effects on the thermal power generation efficiency, that is, the thermal power generation efficiency significantly decrease 1.6799 for each unit increase of market segmentation index of thermal power industry. Besides, by decomposing the dynamic thermal power efficiency index, we find that the "innovation effect" is the primary channel for the market segmentation to make effects on the thermal power generation efficiency. Furthermore, our findings are still robust after considering endogenous problems and eliminating the relevant data. Finally, research conclusions of our study paper provide empirical supports for the efficient development of China's power market.