工业大推动的长期经济影响:基于集聚和人力资本视角的研究

The Long-Term Economic Impact of the Industrial Big Push:A Study from the Agglomeration and Human Capital Perspectives

工业革命带来的技术冲击使人类成功实现了从传统经济增长向现代经济增长的转型。新中国成立后,为了实现工业化以及应对地缘政治的变化,中国于1964年开始在西部地区进行长达十数年的工业大推动式投资,其目的是在西部地区建立完整的工业体系,以备战时之需。本文利用这一外生冲击,使用县级层面的数据和地理断点的方法,对工业大推动的长期经济影响进行了研究。结果发现,工业大推动对当地的长期经济发展有显著的促进作用,即工业大推动期间投资越多的县市,当前经济发展水平越高,一系列稳健性检验均支持这一结论,在排除了西部大开发和工业大推动后期调整等竞争性假说后依然支持结论。机制分析发现,工业大推动期间投资建设的工业体系具有集聚效应,同时支援工业大推动的知识分子通过代际传递产生了知识溢出效应,提高了人力资本水平,从而共同促进了长期经济发展。本文为“大推动理论”提供了来自中国的经验证据,同时也为国家在结构转型中的作用提供了证据,对世界上其他发展中国家实现结构转型具有重要的借鉴意义。

From the perspective of the actual development of China,the so-called miracle of economic development after the reform and opening up policy was implemented is essentially about China's successful transformation from an agricultural country to an industrial one.Therefore,it is important to comprehensively and deeply understand how the industrialization occurs and its important role in national development.Against this background,this paper explores the role of industrialization in economic development.Although some literature has focused on this issue,convincing empirical evidence is at best limited due to endogeneity issues;moreover,the existing literature focuses on the immediate(short-term)effects,and rarely discusses the long-term impact,which results in little understanding of the long-term effects of industrialization and how they are produced.In this paper,the exogenous shock of the Industrial Big Push(also known as the“The Third-Front Movement”)and geographical discontinuity are used to explore the role of industrialization from a long-term perspective.The data used are manually collected from the 1985 county-level industrial census,combined with the 2010 population census and economic data.Judged from the research background,the Industrial Big Push was a large-scale strategic adjustment to China's national industrial layout in the 1960s for war preparedness,centering on building a complete industrial system in the Third-Front Area to cope with the potential threat of war.This large-scale stateinitiated industrial investment was bound to have a significant impact on China's regional economic development in the short and long terms.At the same time,this historical event also provides a good causal scenario for identifying the role of industrial transformation in economic development.The study finds that the Industrial Big Push has a significant role in promoting the local long-term economic development:The more investment a county/city received during the industrial promotion period,the higher their current economic development level.This conclusion is supported by a series of robustness tests,and remains true after competing hypotheses are excluded such as the development of the western region in China and the adjustment of the Industrial Big Push.Further mechanism analysis reveals that the industrial system built during the Industrial Big Push has the clustering effect,and the intellectuals supporting the Industrial Big Push generate knowledge spillovers through intergenerational transfer and improve human capital,which together promote long-term economic development.The significance and marginal contribution of this paper on the Industrial Big Push are shown as follows.First is the theoretical significance.The research in this paper confirms the“Big Push Theory”and provides empirical evidence from China for it.Second,the practical significance.Although the Industrial Big Push has stopped in 1980,but similar large-scale investments made by the state still exist,such as the initiative launched to develop the western region in China in 2000,which is even believed by some scholars to be the continuation of the Industrial Big Push.Therefore,in terms of practical significance,the findings of this paper provide empirical evidence to support similar policies,and they also shows that large-scale national investment for economic development helps to narrow the regional development gap,which also provides ideas and evidence to address regional unbalanced development.Finally,the paper reveals that the Industrial Big Push directly promoted the economic restructuring in the backward regions,which sets an example for other developing countries to realize the structural transformation.This paper also extends the scope of further research in the future,i.e.to cover human capital.The effect of the Industrial Big Push on human capital is undoubtedly important,and can be studied with a combination of census data,cohort difference-in-difference and other methods.Another topic for further research is the effect of the Industrial Big Push on entrepreneurship.Before the reform and opening up policy was introduced,the state-owned enterprises that were born and thrived during the Industrial Big Push cultivated many workers and managers,who have accumulated technical and managerial knowhow and experience and are the entrepreneurial“reserve army”after the reform and opening up began.We can use relevant data to study the effect of the Industrial Big Push on entrepreneurial activity.