Fig 1.
Number of cities with the policy of city-county mergers during 2003–2019.
Table 1.
Quality of public services evaluation indices.
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics of variables.
Table 3.
PSM balance test results in 2003.
Fig 2.
Comparison of kernel density distributions of P-score.
Table 4.
Evaluation results of the policy impact on the quality of public services (Explained variable: Public services).
Fig 3.
Results of the parallel trends and dynamic effects tests.
Table 5.
Robustness of test results based on different approaches to matching (Explained variable: Public services).
Fig 4.
Distributions of estimated coefficients and p values based on placebo test.
Table 6.
A comparison of the policy impact on different aspects of public services.
Table 7.
Evaluation results of the policy impact on the quality of public services per capita (Explained variable: Public services per capita).
Fig 5.
Comparison of administrative divisions in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 2016 and 2021.
Fig 6.
Changes in general public budget revenue and growth rate in Ningbo municipality, 2013–2021.
Table 8.
Comparison of public budget revenue of Ningbo Municipality, 2016 and 2017.
Fig 7.
Changes in general public budget revenue and growth rate in Fenghua District (County), 2013–2021.
Fig 8.
Changes in the expenditures on people’s livelihood and the share in public budget expenditures in Fenghua District (County), 2013–2021.
Fig 9.
Comparison of the nine livelihood expenditure items in Fenghua District (County), 2013–2021.
Fig 10.
Transmission mechanism by which city-county mergers affect the quality of public services.