财政分权引致了市场的异质竞争吗?——来自上市公司的证据

Does Fiscal Decentralization Lead to Heterogeneous Market Competition? Evidence from Listed Companies

中国的财政分权促进了地区竞争,进而推动经济增长已成为学界共识。但分权式改革引致的竞争究竟是同质竞争还是异质竞争却仍缺乏企业层面的直接证据。文章借助上市公司股价波动中的特质信息和产品市场竞争度等指标,给出经验证据证实:财政分权不仅增加了中国企业特质信息,推动了企业的异质竞争,也推动了系统(市场)信息增长和企业同质竞争。并且,财政分权带来的企业同质竞争要大于异质竞争。这些证据表明,分税制下财权与事权匹配度的缺失以及"锦标赛激励"的政治机制设计,使分权下的地方政府既提升了区域经济的市场竞争力,也强化了政府对经济的干预。两种效应叠加使企业的异质竞争能力相对不足。因此,财政分权改革在中国尚未充分发挥其对企业异质竞争的引导作用。文章最后提出了有针对性的政策建议。

It has been the consensus shared by academia that fiscal decentral- ization in China promotes regional competition, thereby improving economic growth. But homogeneous or heterogeneous competition caused by decentralization reform still lacks direct evidence at the firm level. By using indexes such as firm-specific information of fluctuations in stock prices of listed companies and product market competition, this paper provides empirical evidence that fiscal de- centralization not only increases Chinese firm-specific information and promotes heterogeneous competition among firms, but also advances the increase in system （market） information and homogeneous competition among firms. And the homo- geneous competition is more than the heterogeneous competition. The evidence shows that a lack of matching degree of fiscal decentralization and business power under tax federalism, and the political mechanism design of championship incen- tive make local governments under fiscal decentralization improve market competi- tion of regional economies and strengthen government intervention on the econo- my. The superposition of these two effects results in a relative lack of heterogene- ous competitiveness of enterprises. Therefore, fiscal decentralization reform in China has not yet fully played its role in the guidance of heterogeneous competition among firms. Finally, this paper provides specific policy suggestions.