| Since September 2013,with the further reform and opening-up’s innovation experience explored by Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone,China has deployed the first three batches of Pilot Free Trade Zones(FTZs)in the "1 + 3 + 7" V formation along the southeast coast,the northeast border and in the central and western areas,closely followed by the Hainan FTZ and the latest batch of FTZs which established in September 2019.Covering 18 provinces and cities,the speed of FTZs’ construction manifests China’s steady pace of proactive transformation to the internal institutional opening-up and the courage to deepen institutional innovation to stimulate reform under the new situation of economic globalization.In terms of top-level design,the FTZ aims at investment and trade facilitation,the opening up of financial services,streamlined administration,delegated powers,and improved services.It explores and promotes innovative experiences in various aspects,seeking institutional dividends to promote the FTZ regional economic growth and the wider area accordingly.Based on a review of the main policy of the first three FTZs batches,the existing theories and research literature,this essay expands its research sample to the third batch of FTZs because it lacks empirical research as a whole.This essay takes the theory of institutional spillover effect,siphon effect,and growth pole theory’s "backwash-diffusion" effect as its fulcrum.In addition to the regional economic effects of FTZ,this essay also observes the combinations of different FTZ’s batch,location,and policy function,as well as the economic effects of the multi-FTZs’ interregional relation in the whole area.In this essay,the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of provincial value-added industry,total imports and exports,and fixed asset investment data from 2006 to 2019 are used as empirical data.FTZ’s establishment time is used as the event time.Hsiao’s counterfactual empirical approach produces the counterfactual estimates to compare with actual values.The empirical results show that: in terms of economic effects within the region,most FTZs has a certain degree of positive effects on their located region,and their effects differentiate with the endowment of the region and the whole area’s relationship.The promotion effects in the first batch of FTZs are more stable,while the effects of the third batch are more polarized and lagging.Among the area,its interregional economic effects are affected by factors such as the degree of dislocation between FTZs policies,the degree of openness of the area itself,and the degree of difference between regions’ development stage.Specifically,in the Yangtze River Delta Area,Shanghai FTZ,as a mature growth pole,and Zhejiang FTZ,which is oriented by oil products trade,can achieve a win-win situation in the growth of industrial added value;Set up in the same batch in Southern Area,Guangdong was siphoned by Fujian FTZ in attracting investment and international trade,as Fujian has a higher marginal benefit.But the whole area is still mainly promoted;Desenly set up in the same batch in the central and western area,there exist multi-party competition and obvious backwash and siphon effects.On the whole,the interregional effect becomes a zero-sum game. |
