中国地方政府财政竞争的经济增长效应

A Study on the Economic Growth Performance of the Local government Fiscal Competition in China

地方政府财政竞争作为中国式大国治理结构下的重要机制,具有怎样的经济增长效应?本文基于动态面板数据模型,引入空间加权项和时间滞后项来分别刻画跨区互动与跨期差异两种特征,从而对省级政府财政竞争的增长效应进行全面研究。结果显示,政府支出规模、基本建设支出、科教文卫支出以及宏观税负等四项财政政策在跨期互动和跨期差异上存在各不相同的特征;进一步地,本文发现1994年分税制改革以来,宏观税负和科教文卫支出的当期增长绩效明显改善,基本建设支出则出现下降。上述不同政策在跨区和跨期上的不同绩效,可以很好地解释支出规模扩张倾向和支出结构扭曲等政策偏向现象,也为更好地发挥财政政策"保增长、调结构、促改革、惠民生"作用提供依据。

What role does local government fiscal competition play in the economic growth？ In a dynamic panel data model, we introduce a spatial lag term and time lag term to describe the cross-interaction effect and interte difference, and then conduct a comprehensive study on the growth performance of the provincial government fiscal competition. The results of our study indicate that, the four types of fiscal policies, macro-tax burden, the relative size of expenditure, the expenditure for capital construction and the expenditure on culture, education, science and health, have different performances. Especially after the tax reform in 1994, the growth performances of macro-tax burden and the expenditure on culture, education, science and health have been improved, while the expenditure for capital construction get worse. These results shed light on the expenditure size expansion tendency and distortion of the expenditure structure, and provide suggestion for improving the economic growth performance of fiscal policies.