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Official Turnover and Sustainable Development in China

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Abstract

Achieving sustainable development is an important goal for China’s economic transformation to high-quality development. Using the city-year panel data and constructing a green total factor productivity (GTFP) indicator, we implement the idea of an “event study” to explore the impact of official turnover on sustainable development in China. The results, supported by a series of robustness tests, show that official turnover significantly contributes to sustainable development. Furthermore, official turnover mainly promotes sustainable development through the deterrent effect and reducing government construction investment; the turnover of highly educated, local, promoted, and experienced officials could better promote sustainable development. These findings shed new light on the determinants of sustainable development and suggest that local official turnover plays an important role in China’s high-quality development.

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Notes

  1. In the case of controlling for the year-FE, the time trend term cannot be estimated due to the full collinearity. Therefore, here we do not add the year-FE.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. QCDC-2020-21).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Southwest University, No. 2, Tiansheng Road, Beibei District, Chongqing, China

    Xing Li

  2. College of Economics and Management, South China Agricultural University, No.483, Wushan Street, Tianhe District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

    Chunkai Zhao

  3. Institute of Finance and Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 777 Guoding Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai, China

    Jianhua Cao

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  1. Xing Li
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Correspondence to Chunkai Zhao.

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Li, X., Zhao, C. & Cao, J. Official Turnover and Sustainable Development in China. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-023-09864-0

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