中国地方政府扩张偏向的财政行为:观察与解释

Expansionary Fiscal Spending among Chinese Local Governments:Observations and Explanations

本文考察了中国地方政府的扩张偏向的财政行为。本文认为扩张偏向的财政行为是中国式的分权治理模式与缺乏良好制度约束相互作用的结果。本文利用中国28个地区的1994--2004年的非平衡面板数据和Probit模型方法验证了这个假说。本文的政策含义是，要使地方政府执行有利于宏观经济稳定的财政政策，除需要良好的制度基础设施之外，最根本的还是要将中国式分权治理模式中以GDP为主的政绩考核机制调整为以经济稳定优先并兼顾民意的政府考核机制。

This paper investigates the reasons why Chinese local governments prefer expansionary fiscal policy. We find that the expansionary fiscal policy adopted by local governments is an interactive outcome of the Chinese-style fiscal decentralization and the lack of institutional constraints. Based on an unbalanced panel of 28 provinces over the period of 1994--2004, we confirm our hypothesis. The policy implication of our result is that, for Chinese local governments to carry out fiscal policies that help with macroeconomic stability, in addition to building up better binding institutional constraints, the most crucial step is to transform the GDP-oricnted promotion mechanism to some alternative that emphasizes social and economic stability.