| Abstract: | The paper makes an empirical research on the impact of historical factors on modern commercial spirit based on the panel data of provincial level in China. Empirical research shows that, in areas with richer initial endowment of commercial activities, it is more conducive to cultivate and propagate the modern commercial spirit, and the unobserved fixed effects can be explained about 32.8%—40% by the initial endowment of commercial activities. Various robustness tests show that, compared with regions with slower market-oriented institutional change process, the initial endowment of commercial activities can promote modern commercial spirit stronger in regions with faster market-oriented institutional change process. In order to weaken the endogenous problem that may affect the estimation results, this paper uses instrumental variables of the initial endowment of commercial activities, but estimation results once again confirms the above conclusion. |
