财政分权、地方债务控制与预算软约束

A Study on Fiscal Decentralization,Local Debt Control and Soft-Budget Constraint

分权财政体制下,中央政府与地方政府之间由于税基交叠会产生纵向外部性,且这种纵向外部性容易导致以中央政府对地方政府进行转移支付为特征的预算软约束的出现。为分析这种预算软约束对社会福利的影响,本文建立了一个包含中央政府与代表性地方政府在内的跨期迭代模型,并比较了地方政府债务不受控和受控两种情形下的影响。在地方政府债务不受中央政府控制时,预算软约束对公共投资和地方债务都具有显著的正面效果,尽管其也会导致寻租活动的出现。而在地方政府债务受中央政府控制时,预算软约束并不一定刺激公共投资。无论哪种情况,只要中央政府所提供的公共产品边际价值相对较小或地方政府分享的税收份额相对较低,预算软约束都能增进社会福利水平。

There is vertical externality between central government and local government with overlapping tax base which can easily lead to the emergence of the soft-budget constraint characterized as the transfer payments from the central government to local governments. In order to analyze the social welfare impact from the soft-budget constraint, we create an Intertemporal model containing the central govern- ment and representative local government. With this model, we analyze the impact of soft-budget and hard-budget on social welfare under two cases： one assumes local government debts are controlled by the central government controlling and the other assumes not. In the controlling case, soft-budget constraints have a positive effect on public investment and local debts, although the economy will lead to the emergence of rent-seeking activities. In the non-controlling case, soft-budget constraints will not stimulate public investment. In either case, if the central government＇ s marginal value of public goods is relatively small or local government＇ s share of the revenue share is relatively low, soft-budget constraints can improve social welfare.