Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
11-2020
Abstract
The careers of many public officials span multiple localities, yet the economic effects of their inter-regional movements are not well understood. This paper focuses on the rotation of provincial leaders in China and studies its impact on regional economic integration. Estimation results using the gravity framework indicate that when a provincial leader is appointed as the party secretary of a new province, the trade volume from the new province to the old province increases, but not vice versa. Additional analyses using two novel datasets that capture the intensity of inter-provincial socioeconomic activities in China corroborate this finding. We then construct a quantitative trade model that incorporates input-output linkages and show that removing such inter-provincial links associated with the rotation of provincial leaders leads to an average welfare loss of 0.03%.
Keywords
Regional integration, Domestic trade, Leadership rotation in China
Discipline
Asian Studies | Growth and Development | International Economics
Research Areas
International Economics
Publication
Journal of Development Economics
Volume
147
First Page
1
Last Page
21
ISSN
0304-3878
Identifier
10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102524
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
JIANG, Junyan and MEI, Yuan.
Mandarins make markets: Leadership rotations and inter-provincial trade in China. (2020). Journal of Development Economics. 147, 1-21.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2436
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102524