Abstract: By making use of the data of car license applications by China’s prefecture-level administrative units from January 2010 to December 2015, this paper tries to check whether there are retaliatory license-plate lotteries resulted from restricted demands in the car purchasing and estimate the impact of various car purchasing restriction policies on the amount of cars applying for license plate. In addition, its spillover effects are quantified. By using the DID method to eliminate the interference factors, such as the urban internal characteristics, the local purchase intentions and so on, and adding control variables to rule out such impacts as economic development level, transportation facility construction and so on, it is found that under the same conditions, the lottery policy and the auction policy can both effectively control the amount of cars applying for license plate. Meanwhile, the effect of the auction policy to control the amount of cars is better than that of the lottery policy. However, there are significant spillover effects in both the lottery policy and the auction policy, and the spillover effect of the lottery policy is much greater than that of the auction policy.

Key words: the amount of cars applying for license plate; license-plate lottery; auction; spillover effect; DID model