摘要
主流的财政分权理论一般认为,通过“用手投票”和“用脚投票”两种机制可以提高教育、卫生、社会保障等方面的社会福利水平,本文将这一理论应用于1978年以来的财政分权改革与中国小学义务教育的案例,发现财政分权并没有增加小学义务教育的有效供给。本文认为,出现这一结果的内在机制是,西方通行的财政分权促进社会福利水平提高的两种机制在中国并不成立,尤其是人口流动障碍及其地区性差异导致地方政府行为向追求资本投资与经济增长率的方向转变,这导致各地区激烈的财政竞争并相应挤占了义务教育等外部性较强的准公共产品性质的财政支出。本文还发现财政分权对富裕地区与贫困地区经济增长的影响是不一样的,它推动了富裕地区的经济增长而抑制了后者。
I. Introduction
The mainstream Western view of fiscal decentralization holds that fiscal decentralization under a federal system tends to enhance the welfare of society as a whole. This is mainly for the following two reasons： first, the ＂voting with your hands＂ mechanism, or mechanism of constraint exercised through voting, under which a local government elected by local inhabitants possesses the necessary advantage in information as well as the incentives to understand and satisfy the needs of the local public. Second, the ＂voting with your feet＂ mechanism, under which different governments levy taxes at a certain level and provide a menu of public goods in light of the preferences of local residents, while the latter may also choose different local governments according to their own preferences, giving rise to a corresponding mix of taxation level and public goods provision.2 This two-way choice relationship is realized through the migration of people. When these two mechanisms function, competition among different local governments tends to stimulate local governments to take active measures to enhance the efficiency of public goods provision and thereby conduces to the improvement of the welfare of the entire society.
