Anti-Corruption And Economic Growth

Since the reform and opening-up,China's economy has maintained steady and rapid growth,but officials' corruption is constantly emerging.China's new normal economy is facing more challenge.Corruption must be a "stumbling block" to China's economic reform and development in the long run.Whether the anti-corruption campaign can be implemented and deepened affects whether the political foundation of China's economy is stable,and whether China's economy can achieve a long-term,healthy and sustainable development.Since the 18th CPC National Congress,an anti-corruption storm launched by the central government is sweeping across China.The large-scale storm has seen very strict inspections and high-level party officials under investigations.It's sure that no anti-corruption campaign before can parallel.Based on the deep analysis of corruption,anti-corruption and economic growth,officials and local economy researches,this paper empirically studies the relations between anti-corruption and local economic growth,using the sacked top leaders data and annual economic data of 39 cities in the period from 2000 to 2014.We also focus on the different effects on economic growth and investment growth because of officials' exchange or personnel changes.We find that the news of top leaders being investigated or detained has a significant negative impact on urban economic growth.On average,economic growth decreases by approximately 0.02 percentage points in a region when there is a top leader detained.And this effect is immediate and does not last long.In contrast with the negative impact of sacked top leaders on import-export and consumption growth,the top officials being investigated has a more significant negative impact on investment growth,which causes a 0.1 percentage point decrease to the investment growth of fixed asset.And this is also a short-term effect.We also find that officials'normal exchange,reorganization or retirement leads to a slight positive impact on urban GDP growth and a significant positive effect on investment growth.In addition,we find that the negative economic effect of mayor being sacked is bigger than municipal party secretary being investigated.And we also find that there is a significantly different economic effects of officials' normal exchange,personnel changes and being investigated.Chapter 1 introduces the research background and the significance of the topic.Chapter 2 summarizes and analyzes the existing researches and puts forward the hypothesis.Chapter 3 introduces the samples,variables,and models of this paper.Chapter 4 as the key section of this paper,empirically studies the relations between top leaders being investigated and city economic growth.Chapter 5 carries out a large number of robustness tests on the empirical results of Chapter 4 by changing variables and adjusting data.Chapter 6 summarizes the full article and gives suggestions.