晋升激励与工业用地出让价格——基于断点回归方法的研究

Promotion Incentives and Industrial Land Leasing Prices: A Regression Discontinuity Design

本文结合土地交易数据和地级市官员数据,使用地理边界断点回归的方法,论证作为招商引资的工具,地方政府官员如何出于晋升激励调控工业用地价格。回归发现,工业用地价格与市委书记任职时间之间呈现显著的U型关系,最低点出现在5年左右。官员上任后,晋升激励逐渐增强,不断压低工业用地价格,当任职时间超过临界值后,晋升激励减弱,不再压低工业用地价格。进一步地,工业用地出让的规模、住宅用地的价格和规模与官员任职时间不存在显著相关性。这些结果说明了地方官员出于个人政治前途的考虑,针对工业用地进行价格调控。拓展分析通过比较相邻城市土地价格和官员任期时间差,发现城市间压低工业用地价格竞争的证据,并发现了省际边界效应的证据。微观数据和断点回归的方法克服了以往文献的内生性问题,揭示了工业用地价格偏低的原因和背后的变化规律。

In China's land markets, which are divided according to different uses, the prices of commercial and residential land remain high, while the prices of industrial land are too low. Using micro-data on land transactions and a regression discontinuity design, this paper tests how local government leaders adjust the land policies in their jurisdictions at different stages of their term of office in relation to their promotion incentives. We first empirically test the relationship between the industrial land prices and the length of local officials' time in office. The results show that there is a significant and robust U-shaped relationship between the prices of industrial land and the tenure of prefecture-level party secretaries. The lowest point occurs at around 4.6 years. After an official is appointed, the prices of industrial lands decrease gradually, but when the term of office exceeds a threshold point, the prices of industrial lands rise with the increase in the official's tenure. This finding provides new empirical evidence for the existence and effects of promotion incentives. We conduct two supplementary analyses to confirm the causal relationship between officials' intervention in industrial land prices and promotion incentives. First, based on the assumption of a promotion age limit, we find that the U-shaped relationship between the tenure of the officials and industrial land prices only occurs for the group in which the officials are appointed when aged under 55 years. The U-shaped relationship is even more evident in the younger cohort. This finding confirms the conjecture of promotion incentives. Second, there is no significant correlation between the quantity of industrial lands leased and the officials' tenures. Moreover, the officials' tenures are not significantly correlated with the prices and leasing quantity of residential lands. These findings indicate that the officials mainly regulate the prices of industrial lands as result of their promotion incentives. In addition, we test the competitive behavior between adjacent regions and the provincial boundary effect. In this additional regression, we add the differences in tenure between the officials in the local and adjacent prefectures in the basic regression model to analyze the promotion competition between regions. The results show that the competitive behavior depresses the prices of industrial lands within a province. Moreover, the closer the tenures of the local and adjacent prefecture officials, the more intense the competition. However, there is no significant competitive behavior between adjacent cities across provinces, which corresponds to the so-called provincial boundary effect. The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, using micro-data on urban land transactions and monthly data on officials' tenures, we carefully investigate how local officials intervene in determining industrial land prices during their tenure by analyzing the changing trend of land prices at different times during local officials' terms of office. Second, we accurately geocode every land parcel and city boundary. We then choose parcels near the geographical boundaries between adjacent cities and use the regression discontinuity design to eliminate the influence of uncontrollable factors related to location, which helps resolve the endogeneity issues encountered in the literature on the land market. Third, the findings in the literature are compromised by endogeneity problems relating to the mutual cause and effect between the promotion of officials and the development of the local economy. In our paper, the regression discontinuity design controls the differences in the resource endowments of different cities, which overcomes the reverse cause and effect problem in studying promotion incentives. In addition, our findings complement the political economic literature on promotion incentives. Overall the U-shaped relationship between land prices and the tenure of officials provides new empirical evidence for the existence and effects of promotion incentives. The findings of this paper provide a reference for promoting land market reforms and improving the assessment of local officials. Changing the promotion incentives is the key to reducing the distortion in the land market. The existing assessment criteria for local officials should also be changed from emphasizing economic growth to multi-level criteria related to emphasizing sustainable development. To promote economic development, the current situation of local governments' intervention in the market and the vicious competition between local officials also needs to be changed. Based on the results of this paper, researchers can further analyze the effects of local government intervention on the land market and investigate how local governments use land regulations to improve the welfare of enterprises and residents to ultimately achieve sustainable urban development.