官员偏爱籍贯地的机制研究——基于资源转移的视角

A Study of the Mechanism of Leaders’ Regional Favoritism, Based on the Resource Reallocation Perspective

本文旨在探索官员偏爱籍贯地发展现象背后的机制。在理论上,本文证明了,当官员关注其籍贯地发展时,资源在竞争性的要素市场上将向其籍贯地转移,从而出现籍贯地偏爱现象。在实证上,本文把1998—2013年间制造业企业样本在县级层面加总,识别出制造业资本从省内其他地区向省级官员的籍贯地转移。具体而言,省级官员在任期间,其籍贯地的制造业资本平均增长约1.5%,制造业企业数量增长约9%,进入率提高约4个百分点,退出率下降约13个百分点,制造业企业的平均资本规模则没有显著变化。本文还发现,随着制造业资本向籍贯地转移,无论是采用工业总产值还是夜间灯光亮度度量,籍贯地的经济增长快了约2%。这些发现验证了本文的理论预期,揭示了籍贯地偏爱现象是官员通过资源转移影响经济发展的特例。

There is a substantial literature documenting the novel phenomenon of leaders regional favoritism. This phenomenon is clearly different from the fact that leaders are committed to the economic development of their jurisdiction, and cannot be simply attributed to leaders ability. It cannot be attributed to political tournaments either, because a leader s place of origin may be outside his or her jurisdiction, and economic performance outside the leader s jurisdiction clearly does not contribute to his or her promotion. This paper therefore examines the mechanisms behind this novel phenomenon. Theoretically, this paper argues that leaders favor their places of origin through resource reallocation, and provides a model for this phenomenon. In this model, the economy involves two regions labeled region I and region J . Each area is divided into n sub-areas, each with the same initial capital and economic activity. There is a unified and competitive capital market, and capital can flow in the economy without cost. Labor cannot flow between sub-regions, and each region inelastically has one unit of labor. Leaders are both concerned with their native area s development and the development of their jurisdiction, and have the ability to provide certain public services for their native area. Other things being equal, the native area has a larger number of public services, resulting in a higher marginal output of capital. In a unified and competitive capital market, capital in other regions will flow to the native area until the marginal output in the two areas re-equalizes. This kind of resource reallocation will eventually be transformed into a difference in economic performance between the two areas, which leads to the phenomenon of regional favoritism observed in the literature. In this paper, this mechanism is tested using a sample of provincial leaders. In 1998-2013, there were 203 provincial party committee secretaries and governors in the country. Places of origins were distributed throughout 74 counties outside jurisdictions and 32 counties inside jurisdictions. This paper adopts a sample of native areas outside the jurisdiction of provincial leaders as the treatment group, based on the following four points. First, the provincial leader s place of origin is exogenous. At the same time, provincial leaders are also exogenous to their places of origin. Second, provincial leaders have the power to influence the economic development of their places of origin. Third, the development of areas outside the jurisdiction has nothing to do with political incentives. Because the leader s place of origin is not in his or her jurisdiction, its economic development does not directly affect personal career development, which eliminates the political incentive for its improved performance. Fourth, the development of leaders places of origin can be separated from their capabilities. The capacity of provincial leaders will not change significantly with a change in their position, but their impact on their place of origin may change as their position changes. Empirically, based on the aggregate firm data from 1998-2013, we find that manufacturing capital flows to places of origin from other regions in the same province. In the leader s place of origin, manufacturing capital increases by 1.5%, number of firms goes up by 9%, immigration rate increases by 4%, and emigration decreases by 13%, but the capital scale of firms remains unchanged. We also find that the economic growth of the place of origin is 2% greater. These findings are robust, and they reveal that resource reallocation is a likely mechanism of the phenomenon of regional favoritism. This paper complements to the political tournament and ability hypothesis. The resource reallocation hypothesis does not emphasize the direct influence of leaders, but emphasizes that leaders preference for their place of origin will bring about resource reallocation in market competition, thus affecting the place s economic performance. This paper deepens the empirical analysis of leaders influence on economic growth. Lu (2017) has pointed out that “the correlation between the assessment incentives and economic growth seen in the panel data at the provincial or municipal level does not mean that the whole economic growth benefits from the existing system. In other words, it is entirely possible that the cake of whole economic growth has not increased, but only the highly motivated leaders have allocated more economic growth”. This paper models this idea and provides primary evidence.