Replication Data for: Taming the tournament: credible commitment to accountability and the repair of state informational capacity

Does competition enhance or erode state informational capacity? While competition provides comparative benchmarks that enhance state legibility, the resulting performance pressure could erode state informational capacity by encouraging agents to falsify data. We theorize that the state can resolve this tension by establishing a credible commitment to accountability. Under such commitment, competition is repurposed from a catalyst for fraud into a mechanism that suppresses manipulation and enhances the state’s informational foundation. We test this theory using China’s 2013 institutional reform as a quasi-natural experiment, which de-emphasized GDP-centric evaluations and criminalized statistical fraud, backed by an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign. Treating GDP manipulation as a proxy for state informational capacity, we observe a notable inversion: post-2013, regional competition improves state informational foundations. This effect is stronger in provinces with higher anti-corruption intensity, suggesting that credible accountability is the primary mechanism for repairing informational capacity.竞争究竟是提升还是削弱国家信息能力（state informational capacity）？尽管竞争能够提供比较基准，进而提升国家信息可识读性，但由此产生的绩效压力可能会诱使行政代理人篡改数据，从而侵蚀国家信息能力。我们构建理论假说，认为国家可通过建立可信的问责承诺来化解这一内在张力。在此类问责承诺框架下，竞争将从引发欺诈的催化剂，转变为压制数据操纵行为、夯实国家信息基础的有效机制。我们以中国2013年机构改革作为准自然实验检验该理论：此次改革淡化了以GDP为核心的政绩考核体系，将统计造假纳入刑事追责范畴，并辅以史无前例的反腐败斗争。我们以GDP操纵作为国家信息能力的代理变量，观察到显著的反转效应：2013年之后，地区竞争能够有效改善国家信息基础。该效应在反腐败强度更高的省份更为显著，表明可信问责是修复国家信息能力的核心机制。