相对绩效考核、地方领导社会关系与地方政府行为

Relative Performance, Local Leaders Social Ties, and Local Government Behavior

本文在相对绩效考核的模型框架内,考察地方政府内部横向权力结构对于地方政府行为的影响。结合竞赛理论和团队生产理论,本文把地方领导看作一个群体,构造了团队间竞争博弈模型。模型结果表明,团队内部成员之间存在一定的竞争可以提高成员的努力程度,解决"搭便车"问题。实验经济学的证据表明,竞赛参与者之间的社会关系会弱化竞争强度,减少努力程度。因此,使用理论模型预测地方领导之间的社会关系会弱化相对绩效考核的激励效果,从而对辖区绩效造成负面影响。本文利用1990—2014年的省委书记—省长经历信息构造了地方领导之间的社会关系,基于省级经济数据进行面板数据回归。结果发现,当省委书记和省长之间存在一定的社会关系时,辖区内的投资水平显著下降,随后几年当地的污染和腐败水平出现上升,这与理论预测是一致的。安慰剂检验、分样本检验和基于地级市的稳健性检验很大程度支持了主要实证结果。本文的研究表明,在研究国家治理体制中,需要注意部门之间关系与政府上下级关系的相互影响。要提高政府整体治理水平,需要在人事管理中增加干部来源的多样性。

This paper examines the impact of horizontal power structure within local governments on government behavior.We consider the local leadership as a group of agents,and build up a team competition model by combining the contest theory and teamproduction theory.The model indicates that some competition within a team could raises effort contributions and solves the free-rider problem.Evidence from experimental economics show that social ties among competition participants may reduce the strength of competition,consequently lower the effort level.Therefore,the theoretical model predicts that the social ties among local leaders would reduce the incentives from relative performance ranking,and negatively affect regional socio and economic outcomes.We exploit the biography of Chinese provincial party secretaries and governors from 1990 to2014 to construct the social ties among local leaders.Consistent with our theoretical predictions,the panel data analysis demonstrates that when the secretary and the governor are socially tied,the regional investment level diminishes,and the pollution and corruption level increases.Placebo tests,sub-sample tests,and the robustness checks based on prefecture-level cities data in general support our main empirical results.We suggest that the interaction between the departmental relations and the hierarchical relations is important for the state governance system,and it would be beneficial to increase the diversity of local leaders.