文明城市评选对城市经济增长的影响:促进还是抑制?——来自文明城市评选的准自然实验

The Impact of National Civilized City on City’s Economic Growth:Promotion or Impediment? A Quasi-natural Experiment of National Civilized Cities in China

文明城市评选是城市精神文明与物质文明、政治文明及生态文明协调发展的城市治理过程。本文基于中国地级市面板数据与工业企业数据库,使用渐进性双重差分法评估了文明城市当选对城市经济增长的影响,并探讨了其微观作用机制。研究发现:因城市等级不同,文明城市当选导致的城市经济增长效应也会存在差异,高级别城市的当选会显著促进城市经济增长,低级别城市的当选则显著抑制了城市经济增长。该结果在经过一系列稳健性检验后仍然成立。此外,本文进一步的影响渠道分析显示,这主要表现为企业税负提高和企业人力资本积累受抑制两个微观机制。本文的研究不仅为文明城市评选的经济增长效应提供了重要的实证依据,而且为未来优化文明城市评选政策以实现城市高质量发展提供了重要启示。

Chinese economy has become the high-quality development stage,which means the city policy should fully play the crucial role of the urban economic growth.The selection of National Civilized City sponsored by the Central Committee of Civilization is the most important city policy in China,so evaluating its effectiveness is not only of great significance for the implementation and improvement of its own,but also of great value to city’s economic growth.Using this event as a quasi-natural experiment,we estimate the impact of the establishment of National Civilized City on the city’s economic growth,based on the city-level panel data and the micro data from Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database.The study finds that after the separation of the effects of other factors on economic growth,the promotion effect on the urban economic growth of the selection of National Civilized City varies among Chinese cities because of different administrative rank.We find that the higher-ranking cities have stronger role in promoting economic growth than lower-ranking cities which may have a negative effect on economic growth.The result is still valid after a series of robustness tests.In addition,this paper discusses the micro mechanism of the negative effects in lower-ranking cities,and finds that the selection of the National Civilized City does significantly increase the tax burden and costs of enterprises,and significantly inhibit human capital accumulation of firms.The paper also suggests specific policy measures related to the selection of National Civilized City and it provides empirical support for the selection of National Civilized City and urban development policy.