财政外溢下的地方政府公共服务提供——以教育为例

Public Service Provision by Local Governments under Fiscal Externalities——the Case of Education

主流财政分权和公共服务提供理论在强调地方政府竞争效率的同时,较少考虑联邦体制与单一集权体制的制度差异,而且忽视了地方政府在提供一些公共服务时面临着巨大的财政外溢。考虑到我国单一集权的政体背景,应用多任务代理框架来构建理论模型,可以发现,地方政府会忽视产出不易测量的文教卫生等社会民生类公共服务的提供。在人口大规模迁移使得教育支出具有显著财政外溢情况下,地方政府将进一步削减教育支出,并向居民转嫁。未来的政策调整方向是,淡化地方政府经济活动激励的同时,加大对社会民生类公共服务的激励强度,并增加对具有财政外溢的教育的专项转移支付,使其经费负担主体逐步上移。

The theories of fiscal decentralization and public service provision emphasize the effectiveness of local governments＇ competition more than the differences between federal system and unitary centralized system, and ignore enormous fiscal externalities facing local governments. This paper, by using multitask agent framework, argues that local governments tend to neglect the provision of public service with unobservable quality such as education, healthcare. When facing great externalities caused by large scale migration, local governments are likely to further cut down fiscal education expenditure and shift the burden to residents. Future policies should weaken the incentive to economie activities by local governments, intensify the incentive to social public service and raise the amount of fiscal transfer to education to shift the main cost bearer upward.