Corruption stereotype and the unintended consequences of an anti-corruption campaign: evidence from the real estate sector in China☆

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fang, Hanming; Zhang, Rongjie
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research; National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105474
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Anti-corruption campaign; Corruption stereotypes; Land market; State-owned enterprises

摘要

In an anti-corruption campaign, government officials have strong incentives to avoid taking actions that may trigger disciplinary investigations. In China's land sales market, we find that the fraction of residential land parcels purchased by State-Owned-Enterprises (SOE) developers significantly increased after the anti-corruption campaign compared to those purchased by private developers. This result is partly driven by the following mechanism: Because selling land to private developers carries a higher corruption stereotype, local officials, particularly the relatively clean ones, become more reluctant to sell land to private developers for the purpose of self-preservation. Thus China's anti-corruption campaign may have unintentionally contributed to the resurgence of the SOEs. Local officials' corruption stereotype avoidance in an anti-corruption campaign has broad implications.