公平竞争与投资增长

Abstract

公平竞争的经营环境是经济持续增长的必要条件,而现阶段影响我国企业公平竞争的两个重要问题是官员清廉度与政府规制繁冗。本文使用我国地级市2013年1月至2015年8月的月度数据,实证分析了消除这两种障碍对地级市固定资产投资增长的影响,并得出建立公平的市场环境需要提高清廉度并减少政府规制的结论。具体来说,我们发现在政府管理制度化程度较差的地区,官员清廉度越高则固定资产投资增长越快;而在政府管理制度化水平高的地区,官员清廉度则对该市的固定资产投资增长没有显著的影响。这些结果表明,官员清廉度不高和地方政府管理制度化的缺失是阻碍我国地级市固定资产投资增长的重要因素,而提高清廉度并同时提高政府管理制度化水平有利于投资的稳定增长。

Using monthly data of prefectural cities from Jan. 2013 to Aug. 2015,this paper empirically investigates how the governance quality and corruption level impact fixed asset investment growth across Chinese regions. We find that the news of a government official being investigated by the CCP's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection significantly depresses the growth of fixed asset investment with a one-month lag in the city where the official is located. On average,the investment growth rate in the impacted city is lower than other cities by about 2 percentage points. We also find that cities with better institutional environments suffer less from such news than other cities. The results are in support of the hypothesis that in the short run,intensive anti-corruption campaigns may hamper the "greasing-wheel " effects of corruption and thus depress investment growth. Yet improvements on governance quality of local governments can alleviate such short-term negative impact.