官員升遷、經濟成長與地方過度投資——以中國各省為例

Official promotion, economic growth, and over-investment－evidence from Chinese provinces

本研究討論中國政治激勵機制、地方經濟表現以及過度投資之間的關係，第一個研究問題探討：中國自改革開放以來，省長的升遷或職務異動的主要影響因素，本文資料期間涵蓋 1979 年至 2011 年，共 256 個省長有效樣本，以 ordered probit model 探討影響省長升遷的重要影響因素。再者，本文的第二個研究問題是探討在這種特殊的政治升遷激勵機制下，中國省長的職務變遷或升遷壓力是否因此造成各省的超額投資。實證結果顯示：經濟成長與省長升遷有直接正相關，而投資與升遷卻無直接相關，顯然在中國官員升遷機制中，地方經濟表現還是影響省長升遷非常重要的因素，但似乎並非透過提高投資達成。就第二個研究問題－省長的升遷情況對各省過度投資的影響來看，實證結果顯示省長一般職務變動似乎與過度投資無顯著相關，但升遷為省委書記的省長任內，卻的確有過度投資的情況。換言之，本文證明省長為升遷為省委書記的確會致力招商引資，那些最終如願升遷為委書記的省長任內，地方的投資確實會超過區域平均水準，而有過度投資的疑慮。

The paper aims to study the relationships among China’s official promotion mechanism, economic growth and local over-investment. This study is different from previous literature in two aspects. First, previous studies focusing on the relationship between investment and economic growth in China do not consider the effects that China’s specific official promotion mechanism might have created. Second, those studying the relationship between official promotion and economic growth do not count the uncertainty of overheating in testment that official promotion mechanism might cause. Combining these two strands of literature, this study uses Chinese province-level data to explore how local economic growth affects governors’ promotion probability. Furthermore, the paper studies whether the governors’ promotion system results in local overinvestment. The results reveal that provincial governors’ promotion is positively connected with their economic growth performance, but not significantly affected by the average investment during the tenure of the governors. However, over-investment did happen during the terms of those governors who were latterly promoted to be secretary provincial committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). In other words, China’s official and encouragement mechanism may have resulted in provincial over-investment.