Demystifying digital economic performance in China: A local officials’ career incentive perspective
基于政治锦标赛理论，利用2007-2017年中国省级面板数据，发现地方官员任期与数字经济规模呈倒U型关系，且年龄和党内领导效应显著，揭示了职业激励是驱动中国数字经济发展的内在动力。
Digital economy has witnessed phenomenal rise globally in recent years. Drawing on the political tournament theory, this paper investigates whether local officials’ career incentive act as an intrinsic impetus for China’s thriving digital economy. Leveraging a unique provincial-level dataset of digital economy in China spanning 2007-2017, we uncover an unexplored relationship between digital economic growth and local leaders’ career incentive. The results demonstrate that first there is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between the tenure of the provincial leader and the scale of digital economy and digital infrastructure; second, there is a robust age effect and a party leadership effect on local digitalization, underlining the stronger career incentive due to higher evaluation pressure on local officials. Overall, this paper not only adds new nuances to the political tournament theory but also holds practical significances on approaches to fostering digital economy worldwide.