Mayors’ promotion incentives and subnational-level GDP manipulation
研究中国市长晋升激励对地方GDP统计数字的影响，发现晋升压力使GDP增长率虚增3.4个百分点，但实际经济指标无显著变化，且2013年后该效应消失。
What role do local officials’ incentives play in regional economic growth? How do local officials behave under promotion pressure? This paper studies the unintended impact of mayors’ promotion incentives on regional economic growth and subnational-level GDP manipulation in China. We employ a regression discontinuity design that accounts for age restrictions in deciding promotions for mayors. We find that when GDP performance is prioritized in officials’ promotion evaluations (before 2013), mayors’ promotion incentives significantly increase the statistical GDP growth rate by 3.4 percentage points. However, their effects on nighttime light and other non-manipulable real economic growth indicators are close to zero. This gap can be attributed to GDP manipulation under our empirical framework. The above pattern no longer persists after 2013, when the role of GDP statistics in mayoral promotions was reduced. Our findings indicate that GDP manipulation makes performance-based competition between mayors devolve into a data manipulation game.