Abstract: The regional market integration promoted by administrative division adjustment will lead to changes in the ability of urban administrative resources allocation. Taking the administrative division adjustment of the integration of Chaohu city into Hefei city in Anhui Province as a case, this paper employs the synthetic control method to conduct an empirical analysis to study the impact of regional market integration and the capacity changes of urban administrative resource allocation on urban economic growth. The results show that the actual economic growth path of Chaohu City after the regional market integration and urban administrative grade reduction is lower than the potential synthetic control path. Further research finds out that the regional market integration caused by administrative division adjustment has produced significant positive impacts on the economic growth of Hefei city and Lujiang county that have no administrative grade changes, which indicates that the weakening of the administrative resource allocation capacity in the small and medium-sized cities is unfavorable to their economic growth. These research results provide meaningful enlightenment for China’s administrative division adjustment and the coordination of the balanced development between the regional central cities and other small and medium-sized cities in the construction of city agglomerations.

Key words: administrative division adjustment; regional market integration; administrative resources allocation; synthetic control method