中国省区经济差距的内生制度根源

Endogenous Institutions and Provincial Disparity in China

许多人都相信我国省区经济差距与制度变迁（渐进改革）有关，但为制度内生性等问题所困，严谨的实证分析并不多见。本文尝试实证分析各省区内生的社会基础设施（由制度、政策等构成）的差异在省区经济差距中的作用。具体而言，我们找到了反映各省区历史上曾拥有的发展市场经济软环境的数据，并视其为工具变量，从而把各省区当今的社会基础设施内生，结果发现，各省区经济绩效的差异可稳健地归因于其内生的社会基础设施的差异。

What are the fundamental causes of the large difference in income per capita or per labor aeioss provinces in China？ In this paper, we focus on the differences in institutions and policies, or what Hall and Jones （1999） call “social infrastructure”. We propose a testable hypothesis that the current disparity across provinces is fundamentally determined by the current endogenous social infrastructure. Using the development of private industry before 1956 as instruments for current social infrastructure, we find large effects of endogenous social infrastructure on current income per labor. This relationship is robust after controlling for geography, NERI index of liberalization, and Lin＇s technological choice index as the proxy for a province＇s development strategy.