地方官员与经济增长——来自中国省长、省委书记交流的证据

Local Officials and Economic Growth

通常认为地方官员在我国经济发展中扮演着积极角色,近来国家也有意通过干部交流促进省区平衡发展,但国内还没有定量识别地方官员影响经济增长的文献。本文基于1978—2005年间省长(书记)交流样本构造了省长(书记)与省区相匹配的面板数据,系统地实证分析省长(书记)交流对流入省区经济增长的影响(即省长交流效应),结果发现,整体而言,省长交流能够使流入地的经济增长速度提高1个百分点左右;这种省长交流效应是通过在流入地采取大力发展二产、重视一产、忽视三产的产业发展取向实现的。本文的发现是稳健的,有助于增进对加强干部交流破解省区发展不平衡的理解。

It＇s the repeatedly observed phenomenon that the local officials play an active role in the process of economic development in China. The literature, however, has been in dark, because it＇s not easy to separate the impact of local officials on economic growth from the fixed effect. We find the official transfer can serve as the natural experiment to solve the problem of the separation. So we construct the governor-province matched data set in which people can trace back at least two provinces the same governor served in, and then systematically explore the direct effect of governor on the provincial economic growth, which we call the effect of governor transfer. The governor does matter for provincial economic growth. Specifically, it＇ s about 1 percentage of economic growth that can directly and significantly attribute to the incumbent governors, which to our knowledge is the first attempt to understand the economic growth rigorously at the individual level.