腐败与市场经济之关系:以公共采购中的招投标为例

Relationships between Corruption and Economic Marketization: The Case of Bidding Practice in China's Public Procurement

众多学者认为经济市场化在增加自由竞争的同时还能减少政府的市场干预,从而缓解腐败问题。但中国的情况却并非如此,腐败问题自市场化改革之后反而日趋严重。也有学者将该问题归结为政府官员滥用改革赋予的自由裁量权。然而,这种观点未能解释自由裁量权为何没有在深化市场改革的同时受到抑制,以及它在市场条件下又是被如何运作的。论文以公共采购中的招投标为例,从市场行为角度探究为何腐败在经济改革过程中得以不断发展。论文将其原因归结为:官员可以运用自由裁量权削弱尚未成熟的市场机制,主导市场行为,从而以非正式规则取代市场竞争。

Recent academic discussion on the subject demonstrates that economic liberalization not only induces market competition and reduces government intervention but also plays an important role in preventing corruption. However, this is not the case in China. Since the government initiated market-oriented reform, corruption has become increasingly rampant. Some scholars attribute increased corruption to the discretion that officials gained from power decentralization. Discretion alone cannot explain corruption in the reform, however. Why has market competition failed to contain official power and how does discretionary power operate under market conditions? The authors argue that government officials with discretionary power can undermine a developing market, shape firms' behavior, and replace market mechanisms with informal rules. In this way, officials can manipulate the market, thus contributing to the growth of corruption. Examining China's bidding practice in public procurement, the authors discuss how officials influence market operation during economic liberalization, in order to probe the economic roots of corruption and provide policy suggestions.