预算约束、政府干预与工程项目成本——来自中国国有大型施工企业的经验证据

Budget Constraint, Government Intervention, and Project Cost: Empirical Evidence from China's State-owned Large Construction Enterprises

本文通过研究我国工程项目造价及成本预算机制,探讨和检验了地方政府干预对工程项目间接成本的影响,为政府干预微观经济提供了新的理论视角和经验证据。本文运用扎根理论分析方法,通过对某国有大型施工企业实务人员的深度访谈,构建理论模型,并提出研究假设。在实证检验部分,本文成功获取了企业内部会计核算的客观数据,基于177个工程项目成本数据实证检验了本文的研究假设。研究表明,体现工程项目实体性消耗的直接成本构成对工程项目间接成本的预算约束,但超预算间接成本仍然存在,且受到地方政府干预及项目性质的影响。

This paper sheds insights on the relationship between the lo- cal government intervention and the construction project indirect cost, thus contributes to the stream of research on the effects of government intervention on micro-economy by widening the theoretical bound- ary and empirical evidence. Originating from the in-depth interview with hundreds of project managers of a Chinese state-owned large construction enterprise, which is the first listed construction company in China, we use Grounded Theory models to induce the theoretical framework and develop empirical hypotheses of intricate budget con- straint of construction project cost. With the detailed cost data of 177 construction projects sampled from this company, we further prove the hypotheses. We find that （1） the direct cost, the physical cost of a project, reveals specific constraints to the indirect cost, the overhead expense of a project. The data shows that the indirect cost can be revealed as a linear function of the direct cost. （2） However, specific por- tion of indirect cost may escape from the direct cost budget constraint, which we define as over-budget indirect cost, and take the residual of the linear regression from the indirect cost to the direct cost as a proxy. （3） Our empirical test further shows that the over-budget indirect cost has significantly positive correlation with the local government intervention, which is measured by a series of indexes including the index for reducing government intervention, the index for reducing government size, the index for labor mobility, and the index for market intermediaries development and legal environment. （4） Moreover, both the over-budget indirect cost and the effects of local government intervention on it will be significantly influenced by the nature of the project. Accordingly, the projects invested by central government are more likely to expense over-budget indirect cost, while the effects of local government intervention on it are smaller. The conclusion strongly suggests the importance of considering government intervention and nature of project in rationalizing the project cost.