JUE insight: Political geography and the spatial allocation of economic activity: Evidence from China’s anti-corruption campaign

Filipe Campante, Rui Du, Weizeng Sun, Jianghao Wang and Siqi Zheng

Journal of Urban Economics, 2025, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: We show evidence of how political geography directly shapes real economic outcomes by studying the spatial impact on Beijing’s restaurant sector of China’s 2012 anti-corruption campaign, which placed strict limits on lavish spending by public officials. Restaurants located closer to government offices experienced a relative decline in consumer demand. The post-campaign distribution of establishments was less spatially concentrated around government offices and had a smaller presence of high-end restaurants than before the campaign. Our results underscore the role of political geography as a potent, spatially concentrated driver of demand and its influence on the configuration of economic activities.

Keywords: Political geography; Spatial allocation; Urban amenities; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 R10 R12 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119025000622
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:149:y:2025:i:c:s0094119025000622

DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2025.103797

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Urban Economics is currently edited by S.S. Rosenthal and W.C. Strange

More articles in Journal of Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().