Abstract: Political geography, stemming from the informal institutional arrangement of the relationship between the central and local governments is an important part of local political environment. Different from previous literatures about the influence of policies on companies' operations from the perspective of local governments and their officials, as well as the literatures about regional economic growth from the perspective of the central government, this paper studies how political geography affects companies from the perspective of ministries and their officials. The paper analyses how political geography affects companies' investment scale and over-investment by using data of the listed local state-owned companies and private companies from 2007 to 2014. The result shows the more prominent the political geography aspect is, the more serious the issue of the investment expansion and over-investment. This positive correlation is more obvious in local SOEs. However, central voting relieves investment expansion by changing political geography environment. Further analysis shows that different origins of political geography have different influence on investment expansion. Also, institutional efficiency and different types of political connection have intermediary effect. This paper helps us to understand the micro basis of the effect of political geography on the economy and provides a new cognition of deep exploration of the effect mechanism of political geography factors on economic activities in Chinese firms.

Key words: Political Geography, Investment Expansion, Institutional Efficiency, Economic Consequence

摘要： 部委与地方关系的非正式制度安排所衍生的政治地理因素是地区政治环境的重要组成部分。与以往从地方政府及其官员角度考察政策因素影响企业经营活动的文献以及从部委角度考察区域经济发展的文献不同,文章主要从各部委及其官员角度研究政治地理影响微观企业的机理与渠道。文章以2007～2014年上市地方国有企业和民营企业为研究样本考察政治地理因素对企业投资扩张与过度投资的影响。研究发现,政治地理因素越突出,企业投资规模和过度投资越严重,这一正相关关系在地方国有企业中更显著;在换届年份,政治地理因素与企业投资扩张的正相关关系有所缓解。进一步研究发现,不同来源的政治地理因素对企业投资扩张的影响不同;制度效率和民营企业的政治关联弱化了政治地理与企业投资扩张的正相关关系。文章有助于人们理解政治地理影响微观的经济基础,也为深入剖析政治地理因素如何影响中国企业经济活动,提供了全新的认知。

关键词: 政治地理, 投资扩张, 制度效率, 经济后果