政府间的竞赛治理是否有效:文明城市评比与城市卫生

Is Campaign-Style Governance Effective? Civilized City Campaign and Urban Sanitation

为达成特定的治理目标,中央政府常常采用各类评比竞赛激励地方政府。本文使用2001-2017年中国地级市面板数据,考察全国文明城市评选这一拟自然实验对城市生活垃圾治理成效的影响。估计结果显示:荣获全国文明城市后,城市生活垃圾清运量提高15.5%、生活垃圾无害化处理能力提高6.6%,但生活垃圾无害化处理率降低3.4%。前两者提高是城市垃圾处理投入增长所致,而后者下降则是由于获评后市容环境卫生支出不足。事件研究结果表明,由于全国文明城市评选和复核具有周期性,其评选对生活垃圾无害化处理能力的影响也具有周期性。我们还发现,经济增长速度在本省排名位于中游的城市,地方政府对全国文明城市评选的重视程度最大,因此更有动力增加垃圾治理投入。

To achieve specific governance goals, China’s central government often uses “campaign-style governance” to motivate local governments. Using the civilized city campaign as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper investigates the effectiveness of campaign-style governance in municipal environmental sanitation. Based on prefecture-level city panel data in China from between 2001 and 2017, the results of the study reveal that the civilized city campaign significantly increases the removal and transportation volume and the disposal capacity of household waste. When a city has the honour of being given the “civilized national city” award, its urban household waste removal and transportation volume increases by 15.5% and its household waste harmless disposal capacity increases by 6.6%, whilst its household waste harmless disposal rate decreases by 3.4%. The increase in the removal and transportation volume is due to the increase in the mechanised cleaning rate, the road cleaning area expansion, and the increase in the number of vehicles and equipment designated to municipal environmental sanitation. The increase in harmless disposal capacity is caused by newly built disposal plants, especially incineration ones. The decline in the harmless disposal rate is mainly due to the reduction in the daily financial contribution. The estimation results of the event study show that due to the periodicity in the selection and review of civilized cities across the country, the impact of their selection on the household waste harmless disposal capacity presents cyclical behaviour. Finally, it is also found that cities whose GDP growth rate ranks in the middle in the province have more incentives to increase investment in waste management.