Policy choice and economic growth under factional politics: Evidence from a Chinese Province

Abstract

Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.Abstract: This paper investigates how political elites make policy choices that have bearing on an authoritarian regime's economy, from the perspective of factional politics. A local leader makes policies primarily to secure his political survival, which is contingent on the support from either his higher-level patrons or his local grassroots Highlights of this paperWe model how factional ties a¤ect local politicians'policy choices in China.A unique county-level data to measure factional ties and test relevant hypotheses.Counties with weaker (closer) factional ties impose lower (higher) per capita taxes .Counties with weaker (closer) factional ties spend more (less) on public goods provision.Contributes to the literature on economic development under authoritarian regimes. AbstractThis paper investigates how political elites make policy choices that have bearing on an authoritarian regime's economy, from the perspective of factional politics. A local leader makes policies primarily to secure his political survival, which is contingent on the support from either his higher-level patrons or his local grassroots constituents. Using a simple model, we show that a local politician with close factional ties to high-level patrons will invest more in sending loyalty signals to the latter to receive their protections, while a poorly-connected politician will make more effort to spur a broad-based economic growth that economically benefits his local constituents. Using a unique county level data on the factional politics of Zhejiang Province, China, we find that counties with weaker (closer) factional ties have lower (higher) tax burdens per capita, while spending more (less) on local public goods provision. The results are stable after various robustness tests.

Power Distribution and Distributive Politics in Local Developmental States: Evidence from China's Subnational Land Fiscalization

“…Apart from distributing patronage to local governments and officials based on social ties and personal connections (Persson and Zhuravskaya 2016; Jiang and Zhang 2020), provincial leaders need support from lower-level officials to secure their own careers against political uncertainty and risk (Shih 2008; Li and Liu 2016; Zhu and Zhang 2017). Moreover, many studies have noted that even in a country with strong state capacity like China, policy mandates from above still largely depend on lower-level officials, who can significantly influence policy implementation and its consequences by selectively conducting some policies while blocking others (O'Brien and Li 1999, Tsai 2006, Li and Zhang 2018). In other words, provincial authorities use land-fiscalization strategies to channel benefits downward to local governments and officials to boost local compliance and cooperation.…”

Personality traits and occupational status-evidence from China

“…For example, "Conscientiousness" is related to perseverance and self-control; "Extraversion" includes many aspects of interpersonal skills; and "Neuroticism" is associated with locus of control and selfperception. The Big Five model has been proven to be validated across different languages and cultures and is widely accepted in personality and social psychology literature [7,17,18].…”

“…The CFPS data contains rich information on personality traits and direct occupational status indicators. The paper measures one's personality traits with Big Five Model (Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness, and Neuroticism), which were introduced by McCrae and John [16] and are most commonly used in the recent psychology and economics literature [7,17,18].…”

Does the legacy of state planning put pressure on ecological efficiency? Evidence from China

“…Excessive investment in infrastructure has a crowding-out effect on innovative emerging industries and inhibits technological innovation activities (Tori & Onaran, 2018). Although the development of innovative industries reflects technological progress and can improve ecological efficiency, innovative industries have the characteristics of long investment cycles and large return uncertainty, such that local government officials do not choose to develop emerging industries to achieve political promotion (Li & Zhang, 2018). The government's excessive investment in infrastructure construction also has a negative impact on public service industries, such as education, technology, and medical care.…”