Author: Jindong Pang, Shulin Shen, Ningzhe Zhou

Abstract: This paper investigates the spillover effect of government locations on economic growth by exploring more than 180 relocation events of city governments in China. Empirical results demonstrate that government relocations improve regional economic growth measured by night lights. This positive effect decreases with the distance to city governments’ new locations. Government relocations are also found to accelerate urbanization. Potential mechanisms include the changes in land conversion and firm birth patterns in the move-in areas. These results indicate that the relocation of local governments can be an effective place-based policy to improve economic growth and urbanization.

Keywords: Government relocations; Economic growth; Urbanization; Place-based policies.

The article was published in April 2024 in the top-tier journal "Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization" in the field of behavioral economics. This journal is a Level B+ reward journal in the academic journal ranking scheme of the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University. The paper's author, Zhou Ningzhe, is a 2019 graduate of the Economics major at the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.04.015