地方政府竞争与环境政策--来自中国省份数据的证据

Local Government Competition and Environmental Policy——Empirical Evidence from Province′s Governments in China

市场化改革带来了经济领域的分权,在既定的政府管理体制下,这种分权导致地方政府间围绕流动性要素展开竞争。本文从环境政策的角度对我国省份间的竞争和博弈行为进行了实证检验。研究结果显示,我国的财政分权和基于经济增长的政绩考核体制,使地方政府当前的环境政策之间存在着相互攀比式的竞争,其目的在于争夺流动性要素和固化本地资源,而不是旨在解决本地区的环境问题,这是导致我国环境状况逐年恶化的主要原因之一。但与此同时,这种竞争也呈现出从单一控制目标的粗放型策略向多元控制目标的集约型策略转化的动态特点,这表明我国地方政府在制定环境政策时的自我约束机制正在加强。为此,本文认为,为发挥地方政府竞争的良性效应,促进地区间经济社会协调发展,应当改善现行的政绩考核体制,隔断政绩与经济数量型增长间的联系,在保持地方政府的适度积极性的基础上建立公共服务导向型的地方职能部门。

Decentralization in economic affairs was put into practice after market-based reform, and under the current hierarchies in political institution it resulted in local governments competing for mobile resources. This paper conducts an empirical analysis on the strategic interaction in the decision behavior on provincial environmental pohcies. The results show that fiscal decentralization and the evaluation system of the achievement in government officials post access based on economic growth stimulate the Chinese local governments to compete unrealistically with each other through their environmental policies. Their competition aims at chasing mobile capital and labor as well as preventing local resources from flowing out, which is one main reason for the deteriorating environmental quality in China. However, their competition strategies have also evolved from the extensive one with sole controlling target to an intensive strategy with multi-target, which suggests that the selfconstrained mechanism of the Chinese local governments in making environmental policies is now being strengthened. In order to take advantages of the local government competition and push the communities to develop harmoniously, we should improve current evaluation system of the achievement in government officials post access, disconnect the performance of government officials from the magnitude growth in GDP, and then rebuild a public-oriented local government with right incentives.