设立行政审批中心对企业家时间配置的影响——理论与来自中国私营企业调查的证据

The Impact of Establishing Administrative Approval Center on Entrepreneurs’Time Allocation--Theory and Evidence from China

理论分析表明,设立行政审批中心可以改善行政审批的"时间效率",即节省办事通勤和必要行政程序等待时间,从而增加企业家可支配于工作和闲暇的时间;也可以改善"规则效率",即提高本可通过的项目实际获批通过的概率,从而提高企业家生产活动时间的边际效用。两种改善导致企业家减少非生产活动时间,并将非生产活动时间的节约大部分再配置到生产活动中,小部分再配置到闲暇中。利用各地设立行政审批中心的"自然试验"信息匹配中国私营企业调查数据,采取双重差分法(DID)进行经验检验,结果支持理论推测。发现:平均而言,设立行政审批中心导致私营企业家非生产活动时间节约每天约50分钟,生产活动时间增加每天约43分钟,闲暇时间增加每天约7分钟。这表明,设立行政审批中心这一改革举措对于优化企业家时间配置作用巨大。若把非生产活动时间视为企业家精神的浪费,本文估计我国企业家精神浪费高达30%,而设立行政审批中心可以让这种浪费下降7~8个百分点。

Theoretical analysis shows that the establishment of Administrative Approval Center(AAC)can bring the“time efficiency,”that is,saving commuting and waiting time for necessary administrative procedures,thereby expanding the time budget set that entrepreneurs can spend on work and leisure.It can also bring the“rule efficiency,”that is,increasing the probability of that a project that should be approved to be approved,thereby increasing the marginal utility of entrepreneurs’productive activities.The two improvements lead entrepreneurs to reduce non‑productive activity time and reallocate most of it to productive activities and a small part to leisure.By using the“natural experiment”information of AAC in various cities to match the survey data of Chinese private enterprises,with the Difference‑in‑Difference method employed,the empirical results support theoretical conjectures.It shows that the establishment of AAC has made private entrepreneurs save about 50 minutes a day on average in non‑productive activities,and achieve an increase in productive activity time by about 43 minutes a day,and an increase in leisure time by about 7 minutes a day.This shows that establishing AAC plays a huge role in optimizing the time allocation of entrepreneurs.If time for non‑productive activities is regarded as a waste of entrepreneurial talents,this article estimates out that the waste of entrepreneurial talents in China is as high as 30%,and the establishment of AAC can reduce this type of waste by 7 to 8 percentage points.