方言与经济增长.PDFVIP

  方言与经济增长 徐现祥 刘毓芸 肖泽凯 中山大学岭南学院 联系方式： 徐现祥 中山大学岭南学院(510275) 电话 Email ：lnsxuxx@ 感谢语：本研究得到国家自然科学基金项目和国家社会科学基金项目(13CJY031) 的资助，庄初升、杨海生等给予大量建议，在此表示感谢。     方言与经济增长 内容提要：经济增长理论的最新进展强调，文化是解释经济增长的更深层次的力量。中国 尽管有统一的书写语言，但是发音“南腔北调”、方言众多。基于此，本文拟考察多样的方言 是否会影响知识技术的传播、进而影响经济增长。首先，本文根据《汉语方言大词典》中 2113 个县及以上观测单元所使用的汉语方言，构建了 278 个地级及以上城市的方言多样性 指数，该指数基于地域而非个体，可以更干净地识别方言作为文化代理变量的影响。接着， 本文实证发现，方言多样性对经济增长具有显著的负面影响。其他因素不变时，消除方言多 样性可使人均产出提高多达 30% ；机制是方言多样性阻碍知识与技术的传播。最后，本文 进一步考察了可能的测量问题、内生性问题及地形、宗教等可能的遗漏变量问题，本文的发 现依然稳健。 关键词：方言多样性；经济增长；文化 Dialect and Economic Growth Abstract:Culture has become the deeper force of economic growth according to recent development of economic growth theory. China has vast territory and diverse dialects, which implies diverse culture. Will this affect the diffusion of knowledge and technology and then economic growth? According to “Chinese Dialect Dictionary”, which has reported the Chinese dialects of 2113 counties and observations above county, we has constructed the index of dialect diversity for 278 prefectures and cities above prefecture and checked its effect on economic growth. This index is based on regions rather than individuals, which can make us identity the effect of dialect as proxy of culture more clearly. We have empirically found significant effect of dialect diversity on economic. Holding others constant, totally eliminating dialect diversity can increase the output per capita by at most 30%, and the mechanism is diffusion of knowledge and technology. These findings are robust whenwe deal with possible measure errors, endogeneity probl