中国式财政分权与地方经济增长目标管理——来自省、市政府工作报告的经验证据

Chinese Fiscal Decentralization and Target Management of Local Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Work Reports of Provincial and Municipal Governments

本文将实际经济增长分解为政府直接调控的"经济增长目标"和主要受市场因素影响但同时也受到政府间接干预的"计划外增长"两项,通过多层级政府框架的一般均衡模型模拟分析发现,财政分权在实际经济增长、经济增长目标和计划外增长方面的效应并不同步,而且还呈现地区差异性。在此基础上,系统搜集中国省、市两级政府2000~2016年政府工作报告里的GDP计划增长目标并进行系统GMM估计。实证结果表明:整体而言,财政分权对省、市实际经济增长的影响皆显著为正,但对其两个分解指标存在非对称性影响:从全国范围来看,财政分权对实际经济增长的正向影响主要体现为对经济增长目标的拉动作用,而对计划外增长影响较弱且不甚显著;分地区回归发现,东部地区财政分权对实际经济增长的正向影响更多地体现为对计划外经济增长的驱动,而西部地区则主要是通过影响由政府直接调控的经济增长目标来实现的。机制分析显示,财政分权通过不同程度地推动基建投资、房地产投资以及工业化进程,促进了经济增长目标的实现,进而推动实际经济增长。

In the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, local governments in China often play a leading role in the economic development of their jurisdictions, and the fiscal decentralization system enables local governments to have certain revenue autonomy and bear certain expenditure responsibilities, while also shouldering the task of developing the economy of their jurisdictions. Therefore, local governments have the incentive to formulate forward-looking economic growth targets within their available resources and take a package of policy combinations to work hard to ensure the successful and even excessive realization of economic growth targets. In this context,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to investigate the target management of local economic growth under the Chinese fiscal decentralization system.This paper divides the real economic growth into two parts: the "economic growth target", directly regulated by the government, and the "unplanned economic growth", mainly influenced by market factors but also by the intervention of the government. The simulation analysis of the general equilibrium model of the multi-level government framework shows that: The impact of fiscal decentralization on real economic growth and its decomposition indicators is not consistent, but also shows regional differences. Next we systematically collect the GDP growth targets in the government work reports of the provincial and municipal governments of China from 2000 to 2016 and make a systematic GMM estimation. The empirical results show that the overall impact of fiscal decentralization on the real economic growth of provinces and municipalities is significantly positive, but there are asymmetric effects on the two decomposition indicators. The mechanism analysis shows that fiscal decentralization promotes the realization of economic growth targets and real economic growth by promoting infrastructure investment, real estate investment and industrialization to varying degrees.The policy implications are as follows: First, under the fiscal decentralization system, there are differences in the behavior of local governments at different levels. Second, the heterogeneity of economic growth effects of fiscal decentralization in different regions is obvious, so at the policy level, when promoting the reform of the fiscal decentralization system, we should adapt to local conditions. Third, the path of fiscal decentralization affecting the real economic growth has a relatively obvious government-led nature. Therefore, local governments should make more efforts to create a better institutional environment for the development of a market economy and appropriately reduce administrative intervention in economic development.The innovations in this paper can be seen as follows: First, according to the different channels of influence, the real economic growth is decomposed intotwo items.And this approach revealed possible new mechanisms for the economic growth effect of fiscal decentralization. Second, the existing literature mainly focuses on the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth of a certain level of local government. By the general equilibrium analysis framework of multi-level governments, this paper simulates and analyzes the economic growth effect of fiscal decentralization, and by empirically studies, the differences in economic growth effects of fiscal decentralization at different levels can be compared and analyzed.Third, the existing literature considers local governments under a fiscal decentralization system as a homogeneous whole, but this paper discusses the heterogeneity of the realization mechanism of the economic growth effect of fiscal decentralization in different regions.