Grassroots Governance Reform and County-level Economic Development:Evidence from Township Merger Reform in China
Townships serve as the crucial link in providing public services in China,forming the bedrock of grassroots governance.This paper delves into the quasi-natural experiment involving township mergers between 2000 and 2019,employing the difference-in-difference method to as-sess the impact of township merger reforms on county-level economic development.Findings re-veal that township merger has notably bolstered county-level economic development,propelling a roughly 2.6%surge in per capita GDP growth.Over time,this positive impact has steadily esca-lated.Mechanism analysis suggests that township mergers would optimize the scale effect of pub-lic services by fostering rational flow and concentration of production factors,and promoting busi-ness entry and fresh investments,thereby stimulating county-level economic expansion.Hetero-geneity analysis demonstrates that the scale effect of township merger reforms has been more pro-nounced in the east area of the Hu Huanyong Line,and in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta,which has significantly spurred industrial structure upgrading.This paper probes in-to the mechanisms influencing county-level economic growth through township merger reforms,providing new insights for the strategic delineation of administrative divisions and the effective provision of grassroots public services.
township mergerpublic serviceseconomies of scaleagglomeration effectcounty-level economy
万方数据
