规模经济与县行政区划改革:对湖南省的实证分析

The Economy of Scale and The Reform of County's Administrative Region: An Empirical Study on Hunan Province

当下中国许多县乡政府陷入连吃饭财政都难以为继的困境。为解决这一问题,通过对2003年湖南省88个县市的有关数据分析发现,该省县行政区划存在着明显的规模经济效应,即随着县人口规模的扩大,人均行政成本降低的现象。这一发现表明,湖南省以及中东部许多省份或许可以通过扩大县行政规模的手段,达到节约行政成本的目的。

Presently, many county governments in China sink in the predicament of having difficulty to maintain its basic public expenditure. In order to resolve this problem, we conducted related data analysis on 88 counties and cities in Human province in 2003. The empirical study shows thai： the county＇s administrative region of this province exists an obvious effect of economic scale. That is, along with the extension of county＇s population, the administrative cost per capita gets lower. Such phenomenon indicates that Hunan province and some middle and east provinces may probably achieve the purpose of economizing administrative cost by means of expanding county＇s administration scale.