中国地区之间的市场分割——基于“自然实验”的实证研究

Inter-Regional Market Segmentation in China——An Empirical Study Based on Natural Experiment

本文基于"一价定律",利用中国行政区域分界线两侧的空间近邻特征构造了一项自然实验,通过剥离商品跨地区贸易中的摩擦性障碍,有效识别了商品市场在不同行政区域之间的制度性分割。研究表明,省际分界线两侧存在显著的市场分割效应,但将同样的实验思路应用于地级市分界线附近时,却并未发现市场分割的迹象。进一步的分解发现,2001-2015年省际市场的制度性分割和摩擦性障碍都出现大幅下降,当前地区间商品价格变动的非一致性主要由摩擦性因素所致。

Based on"the Law of One Price",we construct a natural experiment using the spatial adjacency among boundaries of administrative division in China,in which the institutional segmentation of commodity markets among division is effectively identified by isolating frictional barriers in cross-regional trade.It was showed that provincial boundaries were flanked by significant segmentation effects,whereas no such effects for prefectural boundaries,which means such segmentation basically lies in the former.Further decomposition reveals the institutional segmentation and frictional barriers dropped dramatically from 2001 to 2015,and the current inconsistency of the cross-regional price fluctuation was mainly caused by frictional factors.