Whether The State Level New District Can Increase The Urban Total Factor Productivity?

As a national strategy,the state-level new district is a comprehensive functional zone established by the state council with the purpose of promoting high-quality economic development,promoting reform and innovation,and playing an exemplary role.With the favorable policy environment and advanced management system,state-level new districts gathered many competitive characterized industries as well as technology-intensive and knowledge-intensive industries,and attracted some factors of production from old town,which is possible to promote urban total factor productivity through institutional innovation,technological progress and improvement in allocation efficiency.However,the intervention of the government will also distort the resource allocation,which may lead to unsuccessful results in City-Industry Integration and high vacancy rate in the new district.Therefore,whether state-level new areas can promote the growth of urban total factor productivity remains to be further verified.Based on theoretical and empirical literature of total factor productivity and state-level new district as well as the panel data of 285 cities in China and state-level new district in 2006-2016,this article measures the urban total factor productivity using DEA method first,then tests how the state-level new district effect the urban total factor productivity using DID method,and finally tests the question again using PSM-DID method.It is found that state-level new districts significantly promote the growth of urban total factor productivity,and this effect mainly comes from the improvement of technical efficiency.The analysis of heterogeneity shows the following findings:First,state-level new districts have a greater impact on TFP growth in central and western cities,while the impact on TFP growth in eastern cities is not significant.Second,state-level new districts in cities with higher administrative levels has a greater impact on TFP growth.Third,state-level new districts with one single administrative subject has a better effect on promoting TFP growth.The results show that setting up state-level new districts is conducive to the transformation of Chinese economy from the stage of rapid growth to the stage of high-quality development,so the state-level new district can be further promoted.At the same time,more attention should be paid to scientific site selection and management efficiency in the process of setting up state-level new districts.Priority can be given to cities in economically less developed areas and cities with higher administrative level,and the management mode of single administrative subject can be adopted to improve the policy effect of promoting economic development quality of the city.