The Non-Economic Field Championships And Economic Development Based On National Civilized City Campaign

Since the reform and opening up policy was adopted in 1978,the economic growth in China has become a miracle and shocked the world in the past decades.As reported in "One of the Series Reports on the 70th Anniversary of New China's Economic and Social Development Achievements" by the National Bureau of Statistics,the average annual GDP growth rate was 9.4%from 1979 to 2018,contrasted to the 2.9%of the world,which contributed about 18%to the average annual world economic growth(National Bureau of Statistics,2019).How to illustrate the miracle has become a hot point for both economic researchers and policy makers at home and abroad.The Championship Theory(also called as Promotion Tournament Theory)was turned to be one of the most convincing explanation theories,which emphasis on the incentives for local officials to stimulate the local economy and increase local public revenue.It holds that the superiors will design a game for subordinates to compete in the economic indicators,which will lead to an economic growth rapidly.The Championship System based on the rules and institutions for the competition was rooted in the unique political and economic system of China,which produced a lasting and far-reaching impact on the whole society,including the economy,the environment,the innovation,etc.The Championship System plays an important role not only in economic fields such as GDP and fiscal revenue,but also in the non-economic fields deeply.Besides the championships in the economic field,there are similar championships in the non-economic fields in China,such as civilization,health,ecology,and food safety.They are organized in various forms,for example,awards and competitions for local government,to be a model city campaign and so on.To some extent,they are part of governance for the central authority.On one hand,according to incomplete statistics by the author,there are more than 18 competitions for the local government to be a model city,which has been designed or sponsored by Central Committee of the Communist Party of China or the State Council.And there are 10 national-level projects retained in the "National Catalogue of Awarded and Recognized Activities(Updated in 201 5)" among them.The National Civilized City Campaign(NCCC)is one of the most typical activities and is reckoned as the TOP ONE.On the other hand,different cities,especially prefectural level cities,have actively participated in the competing activities.They always create a division as an entity to win the game.It is very popular for the local government to take various measures for getting a reward.Because they convinced that the competition is a new way of urban governance and a stimulus for economic growth.Although local administrations pay high attention to these competing games,they have not a clear and unified name.Scholars have not reached an agreement on the name of these programs for the reasons of different characteristics.In this thesis,it proposed the Non-Economic Field Championships(NEFC)and clarifies its definition for academic research.Considered the important but vague role of the NEFC in improving urban governance capabilities,and promoting high-quality economic development,this thesis studies its impact on regional economic development and mechanism from various perspectives.On the one hand,it discusses the definition,characteristics,development history of the NEFC in detail,and explains the operation process of the NCCC as an example.On the other hand,it also quantitatively analyzes the impact of the NEFC on promoting economic growth,improving innovation,and reducing air pollution by the example of the NCCC.In addition,promotion of officials and cost are also studied for the purpose of suggestions in the practice.The following chapters are organized by the line of "question-discussion-solutionThe Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction of the economic growth in China,Championship Theory and Championship system,urban governance modernization,and the positive and negative effects of the NEFC in actual life,followed by the specific questions that will be studied in this thesis.Meanwhile,the framework and research lines are discussed,and the innovations and shortcomings of it are all summarized for further studyThe Chapter 2 is a literature review part of the thesis,which systematically discusses the relevant research articles at home and abroad.The Championship Theory,the related studies about the NEFC,the related studies about the NCCC,and the regional economic growth theory are all summarized respectively.This chapter plays an important role in introducing topics in the thesis.The Chapter 3 introduces the facts of the NCCC,which is taken as the typical representative of the NEFC.It discusses the history,facts,and reasons why it become the most popular one rather than other programs among the NEFC.This chapter provide a whole landscape for the NCCC.The Chapter 4 analyzes the short-term economic growth effect of the NEFC.This chapter is the benchmark of Chapters 5 to 9.The Section 1 puts forward hypotheses based on the analysis the short-term impact mechanism of the NCCC on regional economic growth.In Section 2,a detailed research approach is designed,and the Treatment Switch problem is mentioned for identifying strategies clearly in empirical study.In Section 3,it discusses the difference between the economic growth of cities who won the NCCC and cities who failed from 1996 to 2015.It uses a fixed effects panel model instead of the Difference-In-Difference(DID)and Propensity Score Matching Difference-In-Difference(PSM-DID)to quantitatively measure this effect.In Section 4,further discussions are carried out,including the heterogeneity in different times,different administrative levels of cities,and different regions.Finally,the conclusions of this chapter are summarized,and relevant recommendations are proposed both in theoretical and practical.The Chapter 5 pays attention to the long-term economic growth effects of the NEFC.In order to measure this long-term growth effect and distinguish it from the short-term growth effect in Chapter 4,this chapter analyzes the economic growth effects of Baotou and Yantai as an alternative,which are awarded the title of "five consecutive championships"(that means won five times from the beginning)as a national civilized city.The Section 1 introduces the background of the "five consecutive championships" of the NCCC and discusses the possible impact of long-term the NEFC on economic growth.The Section 2 focuses on the application of the Synthetic Control Method(SCM)and the identification strategy.The Section 3 compares Baotou and Yantai with the other 138 cities that have not won the title of the NCCC to determine the long-term growth effect of the NEFC and robustness tests are conducted in the Section 4.Finally,conclusions are summarizedIn Chapter 6,it analyzes the role of innovation in the relationship between the NEFC and the regional economic growth in the context of the high-quality development.In order to distinguish the role of mediator or moderator effects in it,The Section 1 illustrates the positive and negative power for the innovation of the NCCC,followed by the Section 2 that introduces the identification strategy.In Section 3,empirical tests are conducted.Further discussions are in the Section 4 and conclusions are in the Section 5In Chapter 7,the impact of the NEFC on reducing air pollution is focused on If the NEFC promotes economic growth through reducing the air pollution,this economic growth effect is in high quality.This chapter uses the NCCC as an intervention to find the difference of air quality between winners and losers in the campaign.From the Section 1 to Section 3,empirical tests are the main part of them And the inverted U-shaped relationship between air pollution and economic growth,regional heterogeneity,and the effects of number of the NEFC are all discussed in the Section 4.Based on the conclusions,the policy recommendations are put forward in the Section 5The Chapter 8 studies the effects of the NEFC on the promotion of officials in local government.By collecting the data of the party secretary of the city that first won the title of the NCCC,the party secretary's career features are analyzed on October 2019.It focuses on the changes about the highest position,the position states in 3 years,and the gap year for promotion.Thus,it could find the effectiveness of the NEFC on local officials.This part will help find the motivations of local governors for pursuing the campaignThe Chapter 9 estimates the cost of the NEFC.The annual financial budget data,project expenditure data of the administrative offices that charge of the NCCC in local level,and the special fund data for the NCCC for some cities,are collected from 2016 to 2019 by the Google browser in October 2019.It discusses some important questions,including trends of the cost for participating the NCCC on average,the relationship between city's public investment in the NCCC and their results,the heterogeneity among cities in different states of competition.The Chapter 10 is composed by conclusions and policy recommendations.The main conclusions of this thesis can be summarized as follows:(1)The impact of the NEFC on economic growth.The NEFC may promote regional economic growth in some conditions,which is like the traditional economic field championships or the tournament games.This suggests that local competition based on places in both the economic and non-economic fields could stimulate economic growth.Based on the example of the NCCC,those cities that have won the campaign will have faster average economic growth than those cities that have failed in a short term.The conclusions provide an evidence for confirming that "National Civilized City" is a gold medal.However,this short-term economic growth effect has a certain degree of heterogeneity.The economic growth effect is more obvious and significant in cities that have won the NCCC for a longer period,prefecture-level cities,and during the third competition.There are two prefectural level cities that have won "flve consecutive championships"——Baotou and Yantai.However,the long-term economic growth effect is also very different in different regions.For the central and western regions represented by Baotou,the economic growth effect is much more obvious than the eastern region represented by Yantai.The city's attributes and the scarcity of the winners in one province may contribute to this difference.(2)The impact of the NEFC on regional innovation.There is no evidence to show that the economic growth effect of the NEFC comes from the city's innovation improvement.In the study of the NCCC,there is no mediator effect of city innovation but a negative moderator effect which means that the innovation capability decreases the economic growth significantly in the NEFC.This maybe attribute to the mismatch between the NCCC and the regular work,and the competitive imitation of cities with high innovation ability to cities with low innovation ability.(3)The impact of the NEFC on air pollution.It finds that using the NEFC as a tool to improve air quality requires some conditions.Based on the NCCC,the short-term effect and long-term effect of reducing air pollution in the NEFC are different,forming an inverted U-shaped relationship.For those cities that have won up to 2 times in the NCCC,the NEFC could significantly reduce air pollution on average.At the same time,the effect of reducing air pollution is weak in some cities located in the north of "Qinling-Huaihe" line and cities located in the central region There is no obvious difference among the cities located on the left and right sides of the "Hu Line" in China.In addition,there is no significant improvement of reducing air pollution effect if the cities participating in 2 or more types of the NEFC,such as win both the NCCC and the National Environmental Protection Model City Campaign(NEPMCC).There is a mutual substitution effect among these games.It suggests that the optimum of the quantity may exist in the NEFC,and further studies needs to be considered.Thus,for the efficiency,reforms for the NEFC programs are needed in the future(4)The impact of the NEFC on the promotion of officials.The thesis shows that officials' career is affected by the competition results of the NEFC.It will relatively increase the probability and the speed of promotion for municipal party secretary after winning the NEFC.Taking the NCCC as an example,59.6%of the city party secretary is promoted within 3 years after the city first win the NCCC competition,and 56.8%of them will become deputy provincial or ministerial cadres.The average time for promotion of officials in the NCCC winner cities is 2.27 years.However,this promotion effect is also affected by other factors,such as the city level and the administrative level of officials.Especially for the municipal party secretary who is already a deputy provincial cadre,it will minus the promotion impact of the NEFC(5)The cost of the NEFC.Taking the NCCC as an example,this thesis conservatively estimates the cost of cities in the year 2016 to 2019.The annual average fiscal budget of each city exceeds 4.6 million RMB,project expenditure exceeds 3 million RMB,and special fund exceeds 5.4 million RMB.Meanwhile,various types of public expenditures in the final year of each competition cycle will be double.In 2018,the results of the civilization scores are positively correlated with budget expenditures.For cities that maintaining the winner position of the NCCC,expenditures are greater than those that have not won.It will be a great challenge to comprehensively measure the direct and indirect costs of the NEFC and further studies needs to be done for net benefits in the whole societyThe thesis tries to contribute the literature in research insights,contents,and methods.The main innovations can be summarized as follows(1)Top oneThe thesis analyzes whether,how,and to what extent the NEFC programs between local governments and their officials affect regional economic growth and development.This is a supplement to the research on tournament theory and economic growth.It is a new aspect or dimensionSpecifically,the thesis focuses on the widely development of the NEFC in China.Taking the NCCC which was launched in 2003 as a typical program of the NEFC,its characteristics,operation process,and economic development impact mechanism are all discussed.Followed by above qualitative judgments,both the short-term and long-term effects of the NEFC on urban economic growth are quantitatively analyzed in the next.These is an answer to the question "To what extent will the NEFC affect regional economic growth".Then,the thesis also emphasizes the role of technological innovation,ecological protection,and other factors in the high-quality economic development.It analyzes the mediator and moderator effects of innovation capabilities in the relationship between the NEFC and economic growth;it also pays attention to the effects of the NEFC on reducing the air pollution.In addition,the thesis conducts a heterogeneous analysis of factors such as different regions,different cities,different time,individuals and the whole,and the number of the NEFC programs,which provides a comprehensive and convincing evidence to evaluate the role of the NEFC in the economy(2)Top twoComparing to other papers,the thesis also studies especially the motivation for officials'promotion in the NEFC and costs of the city's competition.On the one hand,considering the lack of research on the promotion of officials in the NEFC,this thesis collects the data of the municipal party secretaries who are in charge of cities win the NCCC firstly,and analyzes the long-term and short-term career development of them.On the other hand,to get the net benefit of the NEFC,it estimates the cost of the NEFC conservatively,using the annual budget data of various cities from 2016 to 2019.Base on that,it also discusses the relationship between costs and scores,between costs and different states of the competition.To a certain degree,these studies will provide supplement and strong evidence for a comprehensive assessment of the economic and social impact of the NEFC(3)Top threeIn the terms of empirical methods,the thesis analyzes the economic growth facts of Baotou and Yantai with Synthetic Control Method(SCM)in the first time,and the conclusions are mutually confirmed by other methods.There are two advantages of using the SCM:it avoids endogenous problems caused by missing variables and reverse causality,which may induce the biases in conclusions;it also avoids confusion between the average impact and the individual impact,so that conclusions are more rigorous and effective.More important,considering the facts of the NEFC,this thesis does not choose the standard DID,multi-period DID and PSM-DID,which they are usually used in the causality inference studies.There is an important issue for estimating the effects when it comes to the NEFC,which called the Treatment Switch problem.If methods do not fully consider the "Tenure"rules,its reference will be biased and does not reflect the true facts.The Treatment Switch problem is illustrated by some cities for understanding,and a more effective identification strategy is adopted in the thesis for addressing the problem.