Does Development Zone Have Spillover Effect in China?

Abstract

We construct a new database of spatial relations between industrial firms and development zones using the Application Programming Interface (API) addressing and document the development zones’ spillover effect on firms’ Total Factor Productivity (TFP). Development zones significantly improve the TFP of surrounding firms, which attenuates with the distance from a development zone, and increases with the density of development zones in a given area. The spillover effect of national development zones decays more sharply than that of provincial ones. The rectification project improves firms’ TFP and the spillover effect of development zones. The establishment of development zones affects surrounding firms’ TFP, where TFP of firms that enter the zone for the first time decreases in the short term but soon rises rapidly.