分权改革是否促进了县域经济增长:一项荟萃分析

Does Decentralization Reform Promote County Economic Growth?A Meta-analysis

过去40年间,通过分权及公共行为偏好来解释中国经济高速增长的学术观点逐渐发展成了一个重要的理论分支,但分权理论本身却并未能得到经验证据的一致支持。基于荟萃分析方法,本文对分权改革与经济增长这一领域内符合预定纳入标准的21项经验研究所报告的121个效应值展开系统评价,整合分权改革与县域经济增长之间的主效应,并检验该领域内研究证据异质性程度以及出版偏误。研究结果显示,分权改革与县域经济增长的主效应为0.0522[95%CI:0.0312—0.0732],二者之间存在低程度的正相关性。该研究领域内存在出版偏误,在纠正出版偏误后分权改革对县域经济增长没有显著影响,现有的实证研究夸大了改革对经济增长的促进作用。异质性检验的结果表明,已有经验证据存在高异质性,即不同研究间的真实效应不同,这是导致现有经验证据出现不一致的主要原因。本文的研究更可靠地评估了分权改革的经济效应,对于从经验证据的角度重新审视分权理论具有重要的理论和实践意义。

During the past four decades,academic explanations for China’s rapid economic growth based on decentralization theory and public behavior preferences have evolved into an important theoretical field of study.But decentralization theory has not been consistently supported by the empirical evidence.Based on a meta-analytical method,this paper conducts a systematic evaluation of 121 effect values reported by 21 empirical studies in the area of decentralization reform and economic growth that meet predetermined inclusion criteria,integrating the population effect sizes of the decentralization reform on the county economic growth and examining the degree of heterogeneity in the empirical evidence as well as any publication biases in this research area.The results of the population effect size analysis show that the value of the population effect size of the decentralization reform on county economic growth,without considering the publication bias,is 0.0522(REM),and there is a significant low degree of positive correlation between the two.That is,after implementation of the decentralization reforms,the economic growth rate in the reformed counties increased by an average of 0.0522 units compared to the non-reformed counties.The results of funnel plot and funnel asymmetry tests suggest that there is a publication bias in the available empirical evidence,and literature that yields positive significant results is more likely to be published.Thus the available empirical evidence exaggerates the effect of the decentralization reforms on county economic growth.When the effect of the publication bias is excluded and heterogeneity is not taken into account,it is shown that the decentralization reforms generally do not make a significant contribution to county economic growth.This result remains robust after replacing the identification method,replacing the heteroskedasticity treatment,and controlling for the individual effects at the potential study level.The results of the heterogeneity test indicate that there is a high degree of heterogeneity(I~2=94.45)in the available empirical studies,implying that the true effects of the original studies included in the meta-analysis differ significantly and that the diverse types of heterogeneous factors are the underlying cause of the inconsistency in the available empirical evidence.The higher degree of heterogeneity suggests that the economic effects of the decentralization reforms are different across locations,which may be influenced by heterogeneous factors such as the reformed regions,the model settings,and the estimation methods.However,the specific factors that contribute to the heterogeneity in the existing empirical evidence remain to be further analyzed through future meta-regressions.The research in this paper more reliably assesses the economic effects of the decentralization reforms.It has important theoretical and practical implications for revisiting decentralization theory from the perspective of the empirical evidence.