2013年反腐运动以来，其中不乏曾经的“明星官员”例如李春城，仇和等等纷纷落马。通过追溯到这些“明星官员”判决书中贪腐行为发生的职务时间，我们观察到其在担任地级市党政一把手期间经济绩效表现都十分优异，有部分城市在省内GDP增长率排名前列或大幅提升。可见官员个人的贪腐行为很有可能与其职务行为有着密切的关系；于是我们把观察对象扩大到反腐运动中落马的所有地级市党政一把手，想要探究具有贪腐行为的地方官员经济绩效是否系统性地优于同级别的其他官员，并解释其中的原因。激励机制无疑是理解地方官员职务行为的关键。在激励机制下，地方官员发生贪腐行为并促进经济发展的动力变得更加明晰。关于激励机制的文献中，较为著名的就是早期的财政激励和“晋升锦标赛”。虽然两种激励方式的存在被质疑，但是可以发现中央政府始终在想办法调动地方政府官员发展当地经济的积极性，例如晋升对于官员肯定是一种强烈的正向激励。尽管“晋升锦标赛”的存在争论不休，但是它都给与了我们认识中国地方经济发展的新维度-中国自上而下的干部管理制度（也即官员的晋升需求）。无论发展地方GDP是“锦标赛”或者“资格赛”，发展经济都是地方党政一把手安稳的执政选择，毕竟以一个强资格者的身份进入竞争环节，也未必是一件坏事。本文尝试利用这一理论解释中国官员腐败问题。我们解释能力诅咒的现象并非为贪腐张目，而是想阐述激励制度的矛盾。理论指出，中国的官僚体制正逐渐规范化，为官员提供稳定的待遇保障和固定的晋升通道。出于管理规范和自身保障而言，官僚机构和官员都支持这一常态化。中央政府利用这统一的规范配合激励机制来动员官僚体制，尤其是地方官员，控制公共政策实施的结果以及驱使其服从中央意图。然而正向的激励机制不仅使得中央政府获取了官僚体制规范化的红利-30多年来中国飞速经济增长，同样也造成了“能力诅咒”的现象；这与官僚机构想要保护雇员及人力资本投入的目的相悖。本文采用多期双重差分法（DID）对 2010年-2016年间被查处的180名地级市党政一把手所在城市和其他城市进行经济业绩的比较。贪腐官员到任作为一个外生的政策变量，观察是否具有贪腐官员主政的城市经济绩效更为优异。本文数据时间跨度为1996年-2016年，数据均摘自EPS全球数据库。
Since the anti-corruption campaign began in 2013, former "star officials" such as Li Chuncheng and Qiu He have been arrested. Going back to the time when these "star officials" were appointed in the judgment, we observed that they performed very well in their economic performance during their tenure as party and government leaders in prefecture-level cities, with some cities ranking among the top or significantly improving their GDP growth rates in the province. It can be seen that the corruption of officials is likely to be closely related to their official behaviors. So we expanded our observations to all the party leaders in prefecture-level cities that have been swept up in the anti-corruption campaign, to see if corrupt local officials systematically outperform their peers in economic performance and to explain why.The incentive mechanism is undoubtedly the key to understanding the behavior of local officials. Under the incentive mechanism, the impetus for local officials to commit corruption and promote economic development becomes clearer. Some of the most famous incentives in the literature are early financial incentives and "promotion tournaments". Although the existence of the two incentives has been questioned, it can be found that the central government is always trying to mobilize the enthusiasm of local government officials to develop the local economy. For example, promotion is definitely a strong positive incentive for officials. Although the existence of the "promotion tournament" is controversial, it gives us a new dimension to understand the development of China's local economy - China's top-down cadre management system (that is, the promotion needs of officials).Whether the development of local GDP is a "tournament" or a "qualification", economic development is a safe choice for local party and government leaders. After all, entering the competition as a strong qualifier is not necessarily a bad thing. This paper tries to use this theory to explain the problem of official corruption in China.We explain the curse of power not for the sake of corruption, but for the contradiction of incentives. The theory points out that China's bureaucracy is gradually standardizing, providing officials with stable benefits and regular channels for promotion. For reasons of regulation and self-assurance, bureaucracies and officials support this normalization. The central government USES this unified norm in conjunction with incentives to mobilize the bureaucracy, especially local officials, to control the results of public policy implementation and to drive compliance with central intentions. But positive incentives have not only allowed the central government to reap the dividends of bureaucratic normalization-china's rapid economic growth over the past 30 years has also created a "curse of competence". This goes against the bureaucracy's desire to protect employees and human capital inputs.In this paper, the multi-period double difference method (DID) was used to compare the economic performance of 180 prefecture-level cities where the party and government leaders were investigated and punished from 2010 to 2016 with that of other cities. The appointment of corrupt officials is an exogenous policy variable to observe whether the economic performance of cities with corrupt officials is better. The data in this paper span from 1996 to 2016, and all data are extracted from EPS global database
