Duplication or experimentation: how local governors make policies under new administrative circumstances

ABSTRACT

This article shows that turnover of local governors increases the similarity of fiscal policies using the data of 320 prefectural-level cities from 2005 to 2012 in China. More generally, local governors duplicate successful experience rather than explore policies accommodating the specificity of their ruling areas when they are faced with new administrative circumstances. The structure and effects of the network resulting from the imitation of policies could be an important research topic in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Political turnover
• fiscal policy
• convergence
• spatial autoregressive model
• spatial error model

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E62
• H11

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant number [71473059 and 71103051] and National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant number [14ZDA052].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grantnumbers [71473059 and 71103051] and National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant number [14ZDA052].