司法质量对中国城市服务业发展的影响

Impact of Judicial Quality on Development of Urban Service Sector in China

法治化营商环境如何影响城市服务业发展?基于笔者构造的127个中国城市2010—2019年的非平衡面板数据和一个新工具变量,研究发现,司法质量的提升将显著提高城市服务业产值占比和就业占比。根据城市特征展开的异质性分析表明,相比于东部地区城市和副省级以上城市,在本地服务业企业开展相互竞争的中西部城市和行政权力更小的地级市,提升司法质量对服务业发展的促进作用更为显著。另外,司法质量提升会导致属于消费性服务业的住宿餐饮业占比显著下降,而合约密集度更高、属于生产性服务业的金融业占比则显著提高,这意味着改进司法质量有利于增量资源流向生产性服务业。影响机制方面,提升城市司法质量会显著降低服务业纠纷裁决的时间成本,但是时间缩短对于服务业发展并没有显著影响,从而间接说明纠纷数量的减少才是司法质量推动服务业发展的机制。为了更好地发展现代服务业,实现中国经济优化升级,建议中国各级城市从培育法律专业人士入手,提升司法质量,改善其法治化营商环境。

How does the legalized business environment affect the development of the urban service industry?Based on the panel data of 127 Chinese cities,this study finds that the improvement of judicial quality will significantly increase the proportion of output value and employment of the service industry.The heterogeneity analysis shows that,compared with cities in the eastern region and cities above the sub-provincial level,the role of promoting the development of the service industry is even more significant in the central and western regions,where local service companies compete with each other,and in prefecture-level cities with smaller administrative power.In addition,the improvement of judicial quality will lead to a significant decrease in the share of the accommodation and catering sector that belongs to the consumer service industry.At the same time,it increases the share of the financial sector with higher contract intensity and belongs to the producer service industry.This means that improving judicial quality may lead to reallocating resources to the producer service.In terms of the mechanism,this paper finds that although improving the judicial quality of the city will significantly reduce the time cost of dispute ruling in the service industry,the shortening of time has no significant impact on the development of the service industry.This evidence indirectly indicates that reducing the number of disputes is the more likely micro mechanism by which judicial quality promotes the development of the service industry.In conclusion,to better develop the modern service industry and realize the transformation of China s economy to a high-quality development model,it is suggested that cities at all levels in China should cultivate legal professionals,improve judicial quality,and promote the legal business environment.