Economic Growth Effect And Impact Mechanism Of The Relocation Of Urban Administrative Center In China

With the development of urbanization,the relocation of administrative center as a means to optimize the urban spatial structure has attracted increasing attention from policymakers and scholars.At the same time,many cities have already relocated its administrative center,or are planning to relocate.From the motivation point of view,the original intention of the central government to approve the relocation of local administrative centers is to optimize the resource allocation pattern of the cities,while the local government promotes the relocation to support the new urban development strategy and foster new growth points.There is no doubt that the ultimate goal of both ideas is to promote regional economic development.However,whether the relocation of administrative center can really promote the urban economic growth is a question that is not only theoretically uncertain,but also lacks empirical evidence.Based on this,this paper uses the panel data of cities above the prefecture level in China from 1996 to 2016,taking the relocation of prefecture-level city governments approved by the state council as a quasi-natural experiment,comprehensively adopting the difference-in-difference method and synthetic control method to evaluate the impact of administrative center migration on the urban economic growth.From the perspective of investment expansion,resource reallocation,and industrial structure transformation,we further analyze and test the transmission mechanism of the relocation of administrative center migration on economic growth.It is found that the relocation of administrative center promotes the economic growth of the city area to a certain extent,and this promotion effect has a lag period of about one year.However,the relocation does not play a long-term role in stimulating economic growth,and this effect shows a dynamic trend of first strengthening and then gradually slowing down.In addition,the relocation distance,city size and regional differences also affect the migration effect.Specifically,compared with other cities,cities in the western region,large and mediumsized cities and cities with a relatively long distance from relocation have more significant economic benefits from the migration reform.The mechanism test shows that the relocation of administrative center can promote the rapid growth of regional economy by expanding the scale of fixed asset investment,changing the allocation pattern of urban resources and increasing the public financial expenditure in the way of government administrative power.However,this process did not promote the transformation and upgrading of regional industrial structure.Specifically,it inhibit the trend of upgrading of industrial structure and failed to significantly promote the rational development of industrial structure,which had limited effect on the improvement of economic growth efficiency.