族群多样性与地方经济增长——来自中国城市层面的证据

Ethnic Diversity and Local Economic Growth:Evidence from Cities of China

族群多样性的经济影响及其发生机制,是经济学中一个方兴未艾的前沿研究领域。文章利用全国人口普查数据和抽样调查资料,构建了中国300多个城市族群多样性的面板数据,通过计量分析发现,高的族群多样性显著降低了地方经济增长率。在考察了测量指标的影响和内生性问题后,结论依然稳健。通过对影响机制的探讨,文章发现:高的族群多样性显著增大了语言沟通成本,降低了私有部门投资率;另一方面,公有部门投资率不受族群多样性的影响,人均中央财政转移支付和族群多样性显著正相关,这两者缓解了族群多样性的不利影响。以上发现,一方面为族群多样性经济影响的研究提供了新的实证证据;另一方面也为中国地方经济增长的差异性提供了一个新的解释,并衍生出新的学术课题和政策意涵。

The economic consequences of ethnic diversity,and its occurrence mechanisms,have not been explored much in economics,especially in Chinese economy.Based on the fifth（2000）,the sixth（2010）national census data and the 1% national population sample survey data（2005）,this paper constructs the panel data of ethnic diversity of 346 cities,then examines the impact of ethnic diversity on economic growth in China at the city level and explores the mechanisms by which ethnic diversity affects municipal economic growth.The empirical analysis shows that higher ethnic diversity,measured by the ethnic fractionalization index（EFI）,significantly lowers the economic growth,after controlling the variables such as initial per capita output level,investment in fixed assets,average education level,trade dependence and urbanization rate,as well as municipal fixed effects and time fixed effects.This finding keeps robust after the use of ethnic polarization indicator（EPI）for robustness check and the use of distance from cities to provincial capitals as the instrumental variable for ethnic diversity to eliminate variable endogeneity.To sum up,under other unchanged variables,higher ethnic diversity leads to lower local economic development.In addition to empirical findings,we also contribute to previous literature by offering better method to deal with missing variables and endogenous problem.By investigating the mechanisms,we further arrive at the findings as follows：firstly,higher ethnic diversity significantly increases the cost of language communication;secondly,higher ethnic diversity significantly reduces investment rate in private sectors;moreover,high language communication cost and low investment in private sectors both reduce economic growth;thirdly,the investment rate in public sectors is not affected by ethnic diversity,and ethnic diversity positively correlates to per capita central government transfer payment,both of which greatly alleviate the negative impact of ethnic diversity.These findings on the one hand provide new empirical evidence for the research of economic consequences of ethnic diversity;on the other hand they offer new explanation of economic growth imbalance across China＇s cities and new policy implications.First of all,this paper confirms the hypothesis that the negative effect of ethnic diversity on regional economy in international literature is also valid in China.Secondly,further discussion of the mechanisms suggests the following empirical implications：first,the promotion of Mandarin in minority areas has a positive effect on economic development in these areas;it is not only correct but also needed to be strengthened;secondly,compared with investment in private sectors,the government-led public investment and fiscal transfer policies that favor the minority regions have played an important role in promoting interethnic equality and reducing the gap of regional economic development.