财政纵向失衡、转移支付与地方政府治理

Vertical Fiscal Imbalance,Transfer Payment and Local Governance

加快推进现代财税体制构建不仅有利于地方政府摆脱"为增长而竞争"的发展模式桎梏,更能从长期提升地方政府治理能力与实现国家良治。首先,本文立足于中国式分权这一典型事实,从理论层面系统诠释财政纵向失衡、转移支付与地方政府治理之间的多重作用渠道与影响机制。其次,构建综合指标体系对地方政府治理能力进行全面测度,发现地方政府治理能力相对偏低与提升缓慢,且具有明显的地区异质性。最后,分别选择转移支付结构与规模作为中介变量,构建面板联立方程模型与采用三阶段最小二乘估计展开实证考察发现:一是转移支付规模和结构虽然都会显著影响地方政府治理能力,但二者的作用方向截然相反;二是财政纵向失衡与转移支付规模的增加显著抑制地方政府治理能力,但转移支付结构的优化却能显著提升地方政府治理能力;三是财政纵向失衡不仅直接抑制了地方政府治理能力的提升,亦能够通过转移支付规模和结构间接阻滞地方政府治理能力的提升。

Accelerating the construction of a modern fiscal and taxation system will not only free local governments from the shackle of the"competition for growth"development model,but also enhance their governance capacity and realize good state governance in the long term.Firstly,based on the typical fact of Chinese-style fiscal decentralization,this paper theoretically interprets the multiple channels and influence mechanisms among vertical fiscal imbalance,transfer payment and local governance.Secondly,this paper constructs a comprehensive index system to measure local governance capacity and predict its trend.The result shows that the absolute capacity of and the improvement in local governance are relatively low,and there is obvious regional heterogeneity.After that,we choose the structure and the scale of fiscal transfer payment as the intermediary variables to construct the panel simultaneous equation model and use 3 SLS to carry out empirical survey.The results show that:first,both the scale and the structure of fiscal transfer payment will significantly affect local governance capacity,but in opposite directions;second,the increase in fiscal vertical imbalance and fiscal transfer payment scale can significantly inhibit local governance capacity,but a better fiscal transfer payment structure can significantly improve it;third,the vertical fiscal imbalance not only inhibits the improvement in local governance capacity directly,but also indirectly through the scale and the structure of fiscal transfer payment.