Regional Economic Growth Effect Of Pilot Free Trade Zone

Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle has risen to the national strategy.How to promote intra circle integration through the reform of the pilot free trade zone is an important issue to be solved urgently.Although there are literatures on the integration path of the two city economic circle in Chengdu Chongqing area,most of them are qualitative studies,and few scholars have made empirical studies on the economic effects of the pilot free trade zones in Sichuan and Chongqing;In addition,although there is a lot of relevant literature on China’s pilot free trade zones,most of them focus on the first and second batch of pilot free trade zones such as Shanghai and Guangdong,and the research on the third batch of pilot free trade zones mainly inland is relatively few.As the economic center of the western region,Sichuan and Chongqing have demonstrated and guided the reform practice of their pilot free trade zones to other inland pilot free trade zones.Therefore,this paper will focus on the double city economic circle in Chengdu Chongqing area and explore the economic effects of Sichuan and Chongqing pilot Free Trade Zone on 43 districts,counties and prefecture level cities in the circle.On this basis,this paper further discusses the heterogeneity of economic growth effects of free trade pilot zones in different districts,counties and prefecture level cities in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle from two aspects of fixed investment and openness to the outside world.This paper intends to use the panel data of 43 districts,counties and prefecture level cities in the economic circle of Chengdu and Chongqing from2010 to 2019 collected and sorted from local statistical bureaus.The experimental group includes 9 districts and prefecture level cities,and the other 34 districts,counties and cities are used as the control group,so as to establish the effective samples required by the double difference method to study Sichuan The effect of Chongqing pilot Free Trade Zone on economic growth in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle.In the first stage,the double difference method is used to empirically investigate the economic effect of the pilot Free Trade Zone on the economic development of the twin city economic circle in Chengdu and Chongqing.The empirical results show that the pilot free trade zone has a positive impact on the economic development of the twin city economic circle in Chengdu and Chongqing.The second stage is the robust test.Firstly,the parallel trend test is used to prove that this paper has the conditions to use the double difference method;Then the placebo test was carried out by two-way fixation of city and year;Finally,using another measurement tool of policy effect-synthetic control method,this paper examines the economic growth effect of the pilot free trade zone again;In the third stage,the heterogeneity analysis is carried out according to the fixed investment scale and opening-up degree,in order to grasp the impact of the fixed investment scale and opening-up degree of each district,county and prefecture level city on the economic growth effect of the pilot free trade zone.The empirical results show that compared with low fixed asset investment areas,counties and prefecture level cities,the pilot Free Trade Zone in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle has higher fixed asset investment areas The more significant the promoting effect of county and prefecture level cities on economic growth;Compared with districts,counties and prefecture level cities with low degree of opening to the outside world,the economic growth promotion effect of the pilot Free Trade Zone in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle on districts,counties and prefecture level cities with high degree of opening to the outside world is more significant.The empirical research results provide corresponding technical analysis methods and policy suggestions for further promoting the cooperation between Chengdu and Chongqing and the development of Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle.