分割市场的经济增长——为什么经济开放可能加剧地方保护?

Fragmented Growth:Why Economic Opening May Worsen Domestic Market Segmentation?

本文研究了邻省之间商品市场的分割对省级经济增长的影响。本文的实证研究发现,分割市场对于当地即期和未来的经济增长具有倒U型的影响,对于超过96%的观察点来说,市场分割有利于本地的经济增长。我们还发现,对于经济开放程度更高的观察点来说,分割市场更可能有利于当地的增长。这说明,地方政府的确在利用来自于国际贸易的规模经济效应时,放弃了国内市场的规模经济效应。为了避免省与省之间以分割市场的方式追求经济增长而陷于囚犯困境,就需要通过中央政府的协调,并发挥民营经济的作用,推动市场整合,获得经济增长的国内规模效应。

This paper studies how market segmentation between neighbouring provinces affects provincial-level economic growth. We find that market segmentation has inverse-U-shape effect on current and future economic growth. For more than 96% of the observations, market segmentation increases growth. We also find that for observations with higher economic opening, market segmentation has stronger pro-growth effect. This means that the provincial governments have given up domestic scale effects when enjoying scale economy from international trade. To avoid the ＂Prisoner＇ s Dilemma＂ in the inter-provincial fragmented growth, only coordination from the central government and the development of private economy can integrate domestic market, so that China as a whole may benefit from domestic scale economy.