Abstract: Fair competition review is a key institutional arrangement for regulating administrative monopolies, and it holds great significance for building a unified national market and advancing coordinated regional development. Based on the data from 281 cities in China spanning 2012 to 2023, this study takes the implementation of the fair competition review system as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a difference-in-differences model to empirically examine the impact of fair competition review on regional economic disparities. The results indicate that fair competition review can reduce regional economic disparities and facilitate the achievement of coordinated regional development goals. The mechanism analysis reveals that fair competition review narrows regional economic disparities primarily through channels that optimize the formal institutional environment and the informal institutional environment. The heterogeneity analysis shows that fair competition review exhibits a distinct“pulling effect”, which is more effective in reducing the economic disparities in regions with stronger review intensity, weaker development capacity, and a less competitive environment, thereby effectively narrowing the“development gap”between cities. Further research reveals that fair competition review exerts a convergent effect on the economic disparities between cities, yet it has a differentiating effect on the economic disparities within cities. This reveals a tendency of target deviation in the realization of the coordinated regional development goals. Therefore, local governments should actively advance the fair competition review system, foster a sound ecosystem for the free flow of factors of production, and leverage the construction of a unified national market to bridge regional economic disparities and promote coordinated regional development.

Key words: fair competition review, administrative monopoly regulation, institutional environment, regional economic disparity, regional coordinated development