次国家财政结构与地方治理:一项实证研究

Abstract

论文讨论了纵向的地方财政支出分权与横向的公共支出结构导向对地方政府治理绩效的影响。基于治理与善治、财政联邦主义与功能性联邦主义等理论视角,我们建构了地方治理绩效、省以下财政分权与地方公共支出的发展性与再分配支出导向,进而利用1997—2009年的分省数据进行了实证分析。研究发现:省以下支出分权水平可以显著地促进地方治理绩效,且这种促进作用更多地体现在县级而非市级支出分权;由于公众需求、腐败寻租等因素,发展性支出比重在很大程度上侵蚀了地方治理绩效,而再分配支出与之截然相反;因为"软预算约束"等问题,地方净转移支付收入在多数情况下也会显著恶化政府治理绩效;此外,政府治理绩效往往伴随着工业化、城镇化等现代化进程,并具有较强的时间序列稳定性特征。基于上述中国正反两面的经验,我们就如何改善政府财政职能与转移支付体系提出了相关政策建议。

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal decentralization and public expenditure structure on local governance performance from vertical and horizontal perspectives,respectively. Accordingly,we proxy fiscal decentralization by calculating the share of expenditure of sub- provincial governments to that of all levels within provinces,classify local public expenditure into developmental function and re- distributional function categories,and develop an index measuring local governance performance based on the existing literature. Using provincial panel data from 1997 to 2009,we make several findings. First,vertical fiscal decentralization within provinces significantly improves local governance performance. By and large,this effect can be attributed to how much sub- provincial fiscal expenditure is decentralized to the county- level governments,rather than to the municipal- level. Second, horizontal developmental function expendituresare detrimental to local governance performance. This is due to factors such as rent- seeking and corruption. We further find fiscal transferscan erode local governance performance. In addition,local governance performance is often positively correlated with industrialization and urbanization,and it illustrates the strong tendency of an incremental effect. Based on these findings,some suggestions on how to improve public expenditure functions and fiscal transfer system are given.