Assessment Of The Economic Effects Of The Comprehensive Financial Reform Pilot Zone Along The Border Of Guangxi

The Third Plenary Session of the 18 th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made relevant arrangements for financial reform,that is,to selectively allow some regions to pilot financial reform projects,accumulate reform and innovation experience,and then promote it,which will benefit to comprehensively promote financial reform.In 2014,Guangxi began to actively build a pilot zone for comprehensive financial reform along the border(hereinafter referred to as " Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi "),which will help Guangxi give full play to its regional advantages along the coast and take the lead in making breakthroughs in the field of comprehensive financial reform and the economic and financial development along the border,so as to enhance the supporting role of Guangxi’s financial industry in the opening up of the border,and further to promote Guangxi’s opening to the outside world.At the end of 2018,the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi came to a successful conclusion.As a "financial reform experimental field",Guangxi undertakes the important mission of promoting local economic development and leading reform and innovation,so it is of great significance to quantitatively evaluate its reform effects.This paper used both the synthetic control method and regression control method to quantitatively evaluate the economic effects of Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi.Compared with the previously commonly used policy evaluation methods,the synthetic control method and regression control method can better deal with the endogenous problem of policy,which makes the empirical results more reliable and accurate.Considering the orientation and objectives of the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi at the beginning of its establishment,this paper focused on three aspects: economic growth effect,farmers’ income-increasing effect and trade expansion effect.First of all,after sorting out domestic and foreign financial development literature and classic theories of financial development,this paper deeply discussed the impact mechanism of financial development on economic growth,farmers’ incomeincreasing,and foreign trade expansion,and put forward the research hypothesis of this paper: Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi can stimulate the economic growth of pilot cities,increase farmers’ income and expand the scale of foreign trade.Then,based on the balanced panel data of 135 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2018,firstly,this paper used the synthetic control method to empirically evaluate the economic effects of the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi.The conclusions were as follows: 1.When evaluating the effect of economic growth,we found that the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi increased the per capita GDP of Nanning、Qinzhou、Fangchenggang、and Chongzuo.2.When evaluating the effect of increasing farmers’ income,we found that the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi had increased the per capita net income of rural residents in Nanning.Specifically,there was a twoyear time lag in the income-increasing effect of the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi,and it did not show up until 2016.From 2016 to 2018,the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi increased farmers’ income in Nanning by the annual average rate of 11.54%.From the perspective of the complete five-year reform cycle,the annual average rate was 6.02%.3.When evaluating the effect of trade expansion,we found that the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi increased the total amount of foreign bilateral trade and export trade of Baise,and increased the total amount of import trade of Chongzuo.Finally,this paper tested the above conclusions by using two robustness test methods: ranking test and RMSPE ratio test.The results showed that the above conclusions were reliable at a certain significance level.And then this paper used the regression control method to empirically evaluate the economic effects of the Financial Reform along the Border of Guangxi again.The results were basically consistent with the conclusions obtained by using the synthetic control method,which proved that the empirical results of this paper were more reliable.