外商直接投资、地方政府竞争与环境污染——基于财政分权视角的经验研究

Foreign Direct Investment,Local Government Competition and Environmental Pollution: Empirical Analysis on Fiscal Decentralization

本文利用2003-2010年全国278个地级城市统计数据,通过构建联立方程模型实证研究了分权体制下的地方政府引资竞争与环境污染之间的关系。实证结果表明:在财政分权体制下,地方政府间的策略性竞争行为显著影响到FDI的区位选择,其中本辖区财政分权水平的提高有利于增强当地引资能力,而邻近辖区财政分权水平的提高则明显阻碍了本地FDI的流入,积极的财政支出扩张和资金缺口成为各地区竞相争夺FDI的主要动力。与此同时,分权体制下的FDI竞争主要通过以下两种渠道影响到地区环境质量:一方面,FDI本身的生产活动对当地环境质量产生了显著的影响,外资带来了绿色环保的生产技术和治理经验有助于提高国内环境污染治理效率,并降低污染排放总量。另一方面,FDI通过影响经济活动的产出或规模来间接地作用于环境,这主要表现为政治晋升和经济激励下的分权体制弱化了FDI的增长效应,地方政府对GDP的过度关注使得区域恶性引资竞争日益激烈,导致中西部地区经济增长陷入低效率的"纳什均衡陷阱",从而进一步加大了部分地区顺利跨越EKC曲线转折点的难度。

Based on a sample of 278 Chinese cities during 2003 - 2010, this paper attempts to empirically study on the relationship between the competition for FDI and environmental pollution by a simultaneous estimation. The estimated results show that governments＇ strategical competition exert significant impacts on the choice of FDI under the institution of fiscal decentralization. Among these, the improvement of local fiscal decentralization is favorable to enhancing local capacity of attracting FDI, while that in neighbouring area obviously decreases local FDI inflows. Proactive fiscal policy and funding gap have become the main motive forces to contend FDI with each other. In the meantime,the competition for FDI affects local environmental quality by two channels. On the one hand, production activities of foreign enterprises have significant effects on local environmental quality, cleaner production technique and advanced management experience introduced by FDI can improve pollution abatement efficiency, and decrease total discharge of pollutants. On the other hand, FDI indirectly affects environmental quality by economic outputs or scale, specifically, fiscal decentralization has a negative influence on FDI＇ s growth achievements under the double pressure of political promotion and economic incentives. The excessive focus on GDP has further aggravated regional competition for FDI, and as a result economic growth in central and western areas could be caught in a trap of inefficient Nash equilibrium, thus further increasing difficulty for some areas to smoothly stride across the turning point of Environmental Kuznets Curve.