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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2025, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (4): 95-107.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2022.0121

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Combination of Effective Government and Efficient Market in Regional Equalization of Basic Public Services: Evidence Based on Government Investment and Private Investment

Jinbo Song, Hehui Yuan(), Rong Nie   

  1. School of Economics and Management,Dalian University of Technology,Dalian 116024,China
  • Received:2022-01-17 Revised:2022-12-19 Online:2025-04-25 Published:2025-04-29
  • Contact: Hehui Yuan E-mail:hhyuan@dlut-edu.cn

Abstract:

Forming a multi-supply system by stabilizing government investment and attracting private investment into basic public services, is an important policy arrangement to address the unbalanced development of basic public services among regions in China. Nevertheless, little is known about the practical effect of this policy arrangement, and its inner theoretical mechanism remains unclear. In addition, the existing literature fails to clarify the manifestation of the current relationship between the government and the market in the process of basic public service development.It attempts to fill the gaps by not only examining the impacts of government and private investment on regional equalization of basic public services, but also exploring the interactive effect between government investment and private investment in this study. Also, it tries to investigate the optimal allocation and benign interactive strategies regarding the investment by the government and market, distinguishing samples based on various economic catch-up levels of different provinces, subdivided categories of basic public services, and time trends over the sample period.For methodological approaches, a series of theoretical deductions are developed and three hypotheses are proposed regarding not only the effects of government investment and private investment but also their interactive effect on the interregional equalization of basic public services. Then, focusing on the provincial scope of view to evaluate the inequality among cities within provinces, and capturing the time inertia effect of the spatial distribution of basic public service development, a set of panel data and two dynamic models are developed. Finally, using the generalized method of moments method, the core models are examined and evidence is explored to test the hypotheses. Moreover, regarding the differentiated interactive effect between government investment and private investment, additional evidence is obtained through heterogeneity analyses based on the differentiation of the samples.The findings are as follows. First, there is a nonlinear inverted U-shaped relationship between government investment and regional equalization of basic public services. Second, private investment has a positive effect on regional equalization of basic public services, but this effect is inhibited by the crowding-out effect of government investment on private investment. Third, private investment in regions with lower levels of economic catch-up is more sensitive to the crowding-out effect than in regions with higher levels of economic catch-up, thus failing to promote the regional equalization of basic public services. Fourth, private investment is more likely to be crowded out by government investment in equalization of basic public services concerning social welfare than economic benefits. Also, the crowding-out effect shows a weakening trend and instability during the sample period, indicating that the synergetic supply of government and private investment in basic public services is not fully formed in current China.

Key words: interregional equalization of basic public services, government investment, private investment, factor allocation

CLC Number: