“人口与发展政策大讲堂”第四十九期

讲座嘉宾：梁平汉

讲座嘉宾简介：

梁平汉，中山大学政治与公共事务管理学院教授，博士生导师，中山大学中国公共管理研究中心研究员，国家治理研究院研究员。研究兴趣包括地方政府行为，博弈论，行为与实验经济学等，论文发表在Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Comparative Economics,《经济研究》、《管理世界》、《经济学季刊》、《世界经济》、《中国工业经济》等国内外期刊，多篇被《新华文摘》、《人大报刊复印资料》等全文转载。主持国家自科面上项目，青年项目，国家社科专项课题子课题等，曾获霍英东基金会高等院校青年教师奖等表彰，是Econometrica, European Journal of Operational Research, 《经济研究》、《管理世界》等期刊的匿名审稿专家。

讲座时间：2019年4月17日（周三）上午10:00-12:00

讲座地点：我院实验室中心学术厅

讲座题目：Winter Is Coming: Early-life Experiences and Politicians’ Decisions

讲座简介：The preferences of politicians matter in policy-making. This paper focuses on the role of local politicians’ early-life experiences in their policy decisions while in office. We take China’s Great Famine (1959–61) as a natural experiment and examine its impact on the fiscal decisions of County Party Secretaries (CPS) who experienced this famine in their early childhood. We construct a data set that matches the biographical information of 2,831 CPS with fiscal data of 1,715 counties during 1993–2007. The results indicate that if CPS experienced a more severe famine that reduced the agricultural population by 10% during their early childhood, other things being equal, they will increase fiscal expenditure on agriculture by 6.8% and increase expenditure on social security by 10.6%. In addition, a 10% more severe famine in early childhood decreases agricultural tax by 38.8%. As a result, the early-life experience of famine leads to more grain production and agricultural employment. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that these influences on agriculture in China are substantial. Furthermore, we also provide evidence that famine experience takes effect through the formation of policy preference for agricultural development, rather than the formation of beliefs about future famine.