Po której stronie płotu trawa jest bardziej zielona? Identyfikacja wpływu granic 
administracyjnych dla zróżnicowania rozwoju na poziomie regionalnym (*)
[On which side of the fence is the grass greener? Identifying the role of 
administrative boundaries for regional development]

Michał Myck (Centrum Analiz Ekonomicznych - CenEA, Szczecin) 


We take advantage of a unique form and scale of the administrative reform 
implemented in Poland on January 1st 1999 to study the role of administrative 
boundaries for regional economic development. The reform reduced the number of the 
top tier administrative districts (voivodeships) from 49 to 16 and created a large 
central region, the Mazovian voivodeship, with Warsaw – the country’s capital as 
its centre. We focus on peripheral municipalities of this voivodeship and compare 
their economic performance in relation to neighbouring municipalities on the 
outside of the Mazovian administrative border between 1995 and 2012. We use a range 
of regional indicators for economic development including employment, measures of 
local government finances, size of local physical infrastructure and a proxy for 
overall development in the form of satellite images of nighttime illumination. 
Applying the difference-in-differences approach we identify differential 
development between municipalities on the inside and the outside of the new 
administrative boundary of the Mazovian voivodeship. We find positive implications 
of being included in the Mazovian voivodeship for employment, local government 
revenue and expenditure and very strong effects for regional public infrastructure. 
The differences in development, however are not high enough to be reflected in 
differentiated development as captured by the nighttime illumination data, although 
point estimates for a later part of the analysed post-reform period (2005-2012) are 
consistent with results based on administrative data.

(*) Joint work with Mateusz Najsztub