论城市的合约性质

On the Contractual Nature of City

城市是一组要素合约的系统集成,由政府提供共用品并与企业家、人力资本、土地等市场要素合作生产出来。在城市发展过程中,各类要素以结构性合约的形式参与合作生产并获取回报。城市化进程的根本动力是改善合约结构、降低制度费用。从合约视角分析当前中国城市化发展面临的问题,可以发现,城乡产权制度和公共服务水平差异导致"半城市化"难题,要素市场分割导致城市体系规模结构失衡,合约结构扭曲导致城市资产制度性逆向补贴并存在天然边界。未来要解决这些问题,就应调整合约结构,构建可持续的城市发展多方激励机制。

Despite of its many disputes,urbanization studies are attracting more and more research in-terest.It is urgent to develop a unified theoretical framework.Based on literature review of three theo-ries including New Structural Economics,New Classical Economics and New Institutional Economics, this paper attempts to develop a Macro-Contract-Structure theory and propose a curve model within transaction costs according to MSC theory.Taking this theory as analysis framework of urban develop-ment and urbanization,this paper demonstrates the contractual nature of city and argues that a city can be regarded as special “product”which is produced through the cooperation of public goods （provided by government）,entrepreneur,human capital,land and other productive factors.In this process,all kinds of productive factors are organized in structural contracts and in turn receive reward.The collec-tion of these contracts can be regarded as the urban economy.The nature of urban development is to reduce the institutional cost by improving the contractual structure.Finally,the challenges of urbani-zation in China are analyzed from the perspective of contractual structure,including：（1）Between ur-ban and rural areas,the main problem is the existence of differences in property rights system and the level of public services;（2）Concerning urban hierarchical system,the main problem is the structure unbalance and factor market segmentation;（3）In the urban areas,the main problem is the distorted contractual structure and institutional reverse subsidies.