Abstract: At present, China's basic public service supply is facing a situation of low total level, regional imbalance and imperfect institutional mechanism, resulting in the growth of residents' demand for public services lagging behind the economic development. Therefore, how to comprehensively enhance the local public service supply capacity and improve the adaptability of the public service supply system to continuously meet the needs of the people for a better life is particularly urgent.
Using the panel data of 275 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019 to construct progressive DID and spatial multiplier models, this paper finds that the economic agglomeration effect generated by the construction of urban agglomerations significantly promotes the improvement of the public service supply. Mechanism analysis shows that compared with non-urban agglomeration cities, urban agglomeration cities have attracted a larger amount of capital and a greater number of enterprises, and have created “agglomeration rent”, and local governments have increased the tax revenue by taxing “agglomeration rent”, thereby providing a strong financial guarantee for improving the supply of public services. Heterogeneity discussions show that the policy effects of urban agglomeration construction are more significant in less financially stressed cities and in the central and western regions. The study also finds that the resource agglomeration function and efficiency advantages of urban agglomerations at this stage have a “siphon effect” rather than a “radiation effect” on the necessary resource elements in the process of the public service supply.
In conclusion, this study has the following contributions: (1)It reflects on the strategic taxation behavior of local governments and the logic of the public service supply from the perspective of the agglomeration effect of urban agglomeration, which is conducive to providing a new perspective for evaluating how economic agglomeration affects the development of public services. (2)It uses the entropy weight method to construct the local public service supply index and conducts an empirical research by applying the construction of urban agglomeration as an exogenous quasi-natural experiment to measure economic agglomeration. This helps to provide methodological support for the construction of the local public service supply and the economic agglomeration index system. (3)This paper finds that relying on the economic agglomeration effect generated by the construction of urban agglomerations, while enhancing the supply of local public services, weakens the level of the public service supply in spatially adjacent cities. These important findings have policy reference value for strengthening cross-regional organization and coordination, coordinating public service standards, and exploring and sharing experience in the public service supply.

Key words: Urban Agglomeration, Economic Agglomeration, Public Service Supply, Spatial Spillover Effect

摘要： 基于2004—2019年中国275个地级市的空间面板数据,以国家级城市群建设为准自然实验,本文实证考察了经济集聚对地方公共服务供给的影响及空间溢出。研究发现,依托城市群建设所产生的经济集聚效应显著促进了地方公共服务供给水平的提升。机制研究显示,城市群建设通过吸引资源要素流入创造“集聚租”,“集聚租”带来的超额税收收入为地方公共服务供给提供财政保障。异质性分析表明,在财政压力较小和中西部地区,城市群建设的政策效果更显著。拓展研究得出,城市群建设会对周边300千米以内区域的公共服务供给产生“虹吸效应”而非“辐射效应”。

关键词: 城市群, 经济集聚, 公共服务供给, 空间溢出效应