政府距离、政策信息关注与政策收益获得

Geographical Distance from Government Seats,Attention to and Gains from Government Policies

本文基于中国地方政府驻地迁移改革来识别企业-政府距离的外生变动,使用2001-2018年中国A股上市公司数据及城市政府迁移前后地理信息来构建双重差分模型,检验了企业-政府距离对企业政策关注的影响及其最终政策收益获得效果。研究结果表明:(1)与政府距离变远后,企业显著提高了年报文本中政策词频数,即失去获取政策信息的地理优势后,企业增加了对政府政策的关注程度以纠正距离变远可能造成的政策认知偏差;(2)企业-政府地理距离变动对企业政策关注的影响存在非对称效应,即距离变远显著增加了企业政策关注,但是距离变近的影响并不显著;(3)企业平均政策关注度的提高主要源自集约边际效应,即已经关注政策的企业增加了信息关注程度,而并未提高企业参与政策关注的平均概率;(4)与政府距离变远而策略性增加政策关注的行为,显著增加了税费返还金额的获得,而对政府补助影响不显著。这表明它增进了更依赖信息的权利性政策应享尽享,同时并未干扰竞争性政策的配置效率。本研究对缓解政策落地难题及政策优化配置的改革实践具有借鉴意义。

Enhancing the sense of gains from policies has always been an important issue,and access to policy information is a key link to solve the"last mile"problem of policy implementation.This phenomenon highlights the importance of policy information accessing for policy implementation.However,the cost of information acquisition has a"distance attenuation effect":the closer the economic entities are geographically to each other,the lower the cost of information acquisition.Meanwhile,some soft information can only be directly conveyed through close observation and interaction.The geographical distance from the government seat will increase the cost of obtaining policy information,and has become an important reason for firms"not understanding the policy and not enjoying the policy benefits".However,little attention is paid to the internal relationship between"firm-government geographical distanceo"n corporateattention to policy and policy implementation effect.This paper identifies exogenous changes in firm-government geographical distance based on the relocation of local government seats in China.And we construct a difference-in-differences method to test the effect of"firm-government distance"on firms'attention to and gains from policy by matching the registered address of China's A-share listed companies and the geographic information before and after the government seat relocation from 2001 to 2018.The results are as below.(1)The increasing distance from the government seat significantly increases the frequency of policy words in companies'annual reports,which means that after losing the geographical advantage of obtaining policy information,firms pay more attention to government policies to correct the policy cognitive bias caused by the increasing distance.(2)There is an asymmetric effect of the change in"firm-government"geographical distance on firms'attention to policies:the longer distance significantly increases firms’attention to policy,but the effect of a shorter distance is not significant.(3)The increasing average attention to policies among firms is mainly due to the intensive margin effect-firms that have been following policies increase their attention to policy information,but it does not improve the average probability of participating in the policy concerns.(4)The behavior of strategically increasing attention to policies while getting farther away from the government seat significantly increased the amount of tax rebates,but had no significant impact on government subsidies.This suggests that it enhances the access to more information-dependent entitlement policies without interfering with the allocation efficiency of competitive policies.This study has important policy implications.Firstly,by strengthening information sharing,we will ensure that the"last mile"problem of the delivery of preferential tax and fee policies can be solved directly,for tax authorities can provide door-to-door service and ensure that the dividend of preferential tax policies directly reaches the market players.This is the key to enhancing the sense of gains from policies among firms.Secondly,it emphasizes close cooperation between government"forward service"and firms'"active communication",which has reference significance for building a new type of sound,"friendly"and"clean relationship between government and business.It is an important prerequisite and basis for building a new type of government-business relationship to"add up""in terms of the attitude,ability and responsibility of serving firms,help firms solve practical difficulties in good faith,and provide guarantee for economic development.Thirdly,we need to optimize the spatial distribution of public resources and improve the quality of new urbanization.Further optimizing the spatial layout of public service facilities and infrastructure,and continuously optimizing the layout of urban functions are important measures to continuously promote the highquality development of new urbanization.This paper also has practical significance for the improvement of the quality of new urbanization and the optimal allocation of urban resources.Finally,the impact of this policy may be multi-dimensional.Specifically,if the change in geographical distance between government seats and firms could change the latter's behavior and decision-making,it will certainly have an impact on the behavior of local governments.These very interesting topics are also important directions for further research in the future.