司法效率、契约密集度与出口绩效:来自高院院长异地交流的证据

Judicial Efficiency,Contract Intensity and Export Performance:A Quasi-Experiment from China's Geographical Rotation of Judges

法律制度的完善和司法效率的提高有助于一国在契约密集型行业形成比较优势,因而有助于出口结构转换和升级。本文采用中国2003—2012年海关库数据,将2008年省级高级法院院长的异地交流轮岗政策作为一个自然实验,利用DDD方法系统评估法官异地交流是否通过提升司法效率进而改善出口结构。我们的研究发现:(1)本文研究的法官异地交流通过三种渠道影响出口结构,即法官异地交流的净效应、法官能力的影响、法官异地交流的异质性影响。法官异地交流的净效应为负,法官能力的影响和法官异地交流的异质性影响则取决于法官的个人特征,包括年龄、之前工作性质等。(2)动态效应回归结果发现,随着法官任职时间的延长,法官异地交流对出口的负影响逐渐变小;并且越接近交流年份,前任法官对出口表现的负向影响越大。(3)法官异地交流主要从"数量"上影响出口结构,在出口产品的"质量"方面影响甚微。法官异地交流对出口关系数量、出口目的国数量、出口产品数量有显著影响,对出口产品平均价格几乎没有影响。本文的研究通过了一系列的稳健性检验,对通过推进中国司法体制改革和健全司法监督机制来实现出口结构升级具有重要政策含义。

The perfection of legal system and improvement of judicial efficiency contribute to form comparative advantage in contract intensive industry for one country,and thus help to export structure transformation and upgrade.This paper uses the Chinese customs data in 2003-2012,and takes the DDD method to evaluate whether the geographical rotation of judges has promoted judicial efficiency and improved export structure systematically,by regarding the geographical rotation policy of provincial chief justices of the higher People's courts during 2008 as a natural experiment.We found that:(1)The geographical rotation policy of provincial chief justices affects export structure via 3 channels,which is the net effect,the effect of justices'ability and heterogeneity.The net effect is negative while the effect of justices'ability and heterogeneity depends on officials'characteristics including age,previous occupation and so on.(2)By investigating the dynamic effect,the net negative effect becomes smaller with the justices'extension of time in office.And the closer it is to rotation year,the bigger negative effect the former justice has on export performance.(3)The policy influences export structure mainly by quantity but not by quality.The geographical rotation of judges has obvious influences on the quantity of export relationships,export destination countries and export products while it has little effect on the average export prices.Our research still stands through a series of robustness tests and is meaningful to help promote Chinese judicial system reformation and improve the judicial supervision mechanism to achieve export structure upgrade on the policy.