会议预告丨人大国发院“理论与政策”研讨会（第101-103期）

第101期   

Administrative Division Adjustment and Environmental Regulation: Evidence from City-County Mergers in China

主讲：邹静娴（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

主持：刘瑞明（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

时间：2022年11月17日14:00-15:10

地点：崇德西楼815会议室

For countries like China where the market segmentation is widespread, the introduction of administrative division adjustment is expected to facilitate the inter-regional integration. In this paper, we investigate the effects of one specific form of administrative division adjustment, i.e., city-county mergers (CCM, hereafter) on environmental regulation. We propose two different integrations resulted from the CCM, that is, economic integration and political integration. Specifically, the economic integration, by weakening market segmentation, may lead to a “scale expansion effect” on firms, which may hurt local environment; While political integration, by transferring the autonomy of the merged county to the city, would weaken the “race to the bottom” competition in terms of environmental regulation between the merged county and original municipal districts and thus benefit local environment, which is named “competition weakening effect”. Using China Industrial Enterprises Database and Pollution Database of China Industrial Enterprises, it’s found that the CCM could significantly lower the local pollution, suggesting the dominant role of “competition weakening effect”. Furthermore, such an improvement in environmental quality is largely due to the cleaner use of energy from the beginning. Additionally, decomposition analysis discloses that the improvement in energy efficiency was largely resulted from the between-firm component of surviving firms and the entry of new firms which are more energy efficient. 

邹静娴，中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院副教授。主要研究方向为国际经济学和发展经济学，研究成果发表于China Economic Review、Ecological Economics、International Tax and Public Finance、《经济研究》、《管理世界》、《世界经济》、《金融研究》、《统计研究》等中英文期刊。曾获“北京大学优秀博士学位论文”、“《世界经济年鉴2017》国际发展经济学十佳中文论文”、“中国人民大学优秀科研成果奖”等学术奖励。

第102期  

Window Dressing in the Public Sector: Evidence from China’s Compulsory Education Promotion Program

主讲：刘畅（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

主持：刘瑞明（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

时间：2022年11月17日15:10-16:20

地点：崇德西楼815会议室

We analyzed the window-dressing behavior of China’s local governments throughout the 1990s, when they were required to fulfill compulsory education targets imposed by the central government. County officials faced severe negative career consequences if they failed to fulfill these targets. We found that county-level education expenditures increased dramatically as the pre-specified inspection period drew near, but decreased immediately after the inspection. This phenomenon was interpreted as evidence of the window-dressing behavior of county governments. Further analysis suggests that local officials with longer tenure and who were thus closer to promotion evaluations tended to engage in more aggressively window-dressing. Window-dressing behavior generates real consequences for school-age teenagers: those exposed to local governments’ window-dressing behavior recorded considerably lower junior high school graduation rates and poorer labor market outcomes later in life.

刘畅，中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院讲师。中央财经大学财政学院经济学学士、硕士，北京大学光华管理学院经济学博士，曾在普林斯顿大学和香港中文大学（深圳）进行博士后研究。研究成果发表于Journal of Development Economics、Journal of Law, Economics & Organization、Journal of Comparative Economics、European Journal of Political Economy、《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《世界经济》、《经济学季刊》和《金融研究》等中英文杂志。主持国家自然科学基金等科研项目。曾获得洪银兴经济学奖、当代经济学博士创新项目、全国优秀财政理论研究成果一等奖、邓子基财经学术论文奖和中国人民大学优秀科研成果奖等荣誉。

第103期  

Fire or Retire: Making Career Incentives Matter for State Effectiveness

主讲：秦聪（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

主持：刘瑞明（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

时间：2022年11月17日16:20-17:30

地点：崇德西楼815会议室

Adopting an effective institutional incentive to enhance effectiveness is probably critical for any organizations and particularly for politics. Drawing on a novel bureaucrat-prefecture-year panel of China covering 1838 prefectural secretaries from 325 prefectures between 1984 and 2015, along with a regression discontinuity design built upon a promotion age ceiling embedded in China’s bureaucratic apparatus, we find a significant effect of career incentives faced by local leaders on their corresponding economic performance. Nevertheless, it also raises concerns on the sustainability of such pattern, as additional evidence shows the short-term gain is mainly through massive capital investment, rather than the improvement of efficiency (human capital or TFP).

秦聪，中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院副教授。主要研究方向为财政学和发展经济学。曾在European Economic Review、Journal of International Money and Finance、《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《世界经济》、《中国工业经济》等中英文学术期刊发表论文多篇。主持国家自然科学基金等科研项目。曾获第十届“黄达-蒙代尔经济学奖”。

文稿来源：人大国发院

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