晚清厘金征收与市场整合--基于双重差分法的量化研究

市场整合对经济发展具有重要影响,为理解近代中国经济社会艰难的发展历程,有必要考察这一时期损害市场整合的因素。本文采用双重差分法量化考察了晚清厘金对粮食市场整合的影响,发现厘金征收显著降低了相邻府间的市场整合水平,这种影响占全样本市场整合水平变化的60%。并且这一估计结果得到了多种稳健性检验的支持。此外,本文发现厘金也损害了长距离贸易和市场整合水平。本文的发现有助于理解近代中国艰难的经济发展历程,也丰富了一系列考察中国长期经济发展中市场整合问题的研究。

The Levy of Likin and Market Integration in the Late Qing Dynasty:A Quantitative Study Based on Difference-in-Differences

Market integration has an important impact on economic development.In order to understand the difficult process of China's economic and social development in modern history,it is necessary to examine the factors harmful to China's market integration during this period.This paper utilizes Difference-in-Differences to analyze the negative impacts of Likin on grain market integration in the late Qing Dynasty.We find that the levy of Likin significantly reduced the degree of market integration among contiguous prefectures and this effect accounts for 60%of total variance in the market integration level.The result is supported by a variety of robustness tests.In addition,this study also finds that the levy of Likin has a significantly negative impact on the degree of long-distance market integration.The findings of this paper allow us to have a better understanding of the hard process of economic and social development of modern China,and at the same time,this paper enriches a series of research on China's market integration in long-run economic development.