城市政府驻地搬迁对经济增长的影响研究

Impact of city government relocation on economic growth

城市政府驻地搬迁是政府重新配置空间资源以达到优化空间结构并推动地区经济发展的行政手段。然而,当前中央政府对城市政府搬迁的谨慎态度与地方政府热衷搬迁的现实行为产生了矛盾,增强了对该政策评估研究的强烈需求。同时,以往研究较少关注城市政府驻地搬迁对整体经济的影响,且缺乏大样本实证证据。本文选取1996—2016年城市面板数据,采用倾向得分匹配倍差法检验城市政府驻地搬迁对经济增长的影响。结果表明,城市政府驻地搬迁对城市经济增长起到了显著的促进作用,而城市发展因素会调节搬迁带来的经济增长效应,产生异质性结果。其中,搬迁距离、经济发展水平、固定资产投资率、政府干预等城市发展因素会放大搬迁产生的经济增长效应,建设用地增长率会缩减这一效应,而城市规模对搬迁带来的经济增长没有显著的调节作用。从时间效应上来看,城市政府驻地搬迁对城市经济增长具有长期促进作用,并在搬迁约7年后随时间推移逐渐增强。本研究不仅直接检验了城市政府驻地搬迁对城市整体经济增长的促进效应,为优化行政区划调整提供学术依据,也对评估地方政府驻地搬迁效果具有重要参考价值。

Relocating government seats is a city administrative strategy for optimizing space and structural organization, and for promoting economic development through re-allocation of urban space resources. However, there is a disconnect between the central government’s current cautious attitude toward government relocation, and local government’s actual benefits from such relocation, which reinforces the demand for policy evaluation research. Previous studies paid insufficient attention to the impact of urban government relocations on the overall economy, and lacked empirical evidence of large samples. This paper uses China’s urban panel data from 1996 to 2016, and adopts a Difference-in-Difference approach based on Propensity Score Matching(PSM-DID) to examine the effect of urban government relocation on economic growth. The results show that urban government relocations significantly promote urban economic growth. However, other urban characteristics will also affect the economic growth effects of relocation, and produce heterogeneous results. Among these, urban characteristics such as migration distance, economic development level, fixed asset investment rate, and government intervention amplify the economic growth effect of relocation, while the growth of construction land reduces it. The size of the city, on the other hand, has no significant regulating effect on the economic growth generated by government relocation. From the perspective of the time, the long-term economic growth created by urban government relocation increases after about 7 years of relocation. The findings of this paper not only support the positive effect of urban government relocations on a city’s economic growth, and provide an academic basis for optimizing administrative divisions adjustments, but also provide an important resource for the governments in considering the relocation plans for local administrative centers.