地方政府规模影响因素的经验研究

An Empirical Study of Influencing Factors of Local Government Size

本文采用辽宁省地级市1999—2011年的面板数据为样本,对地方政府规模与其影响因素之间的关系进行了经验研究。研究发现,经济发展水平和政府规模具有负相关关系,这证明了瓦格纳法则在本文所选择的时间段内不能适用;失业率与地方政府规模的关系是确定的,但是,随着城市化水平的不断提高,政府规模有缩减的趋势;另外,本文无法验证财政分权与政府规模之间的关系符合利维坦假说;外商直接投资与政府规模之间的关系不显著;公共服务需求与政府规模之间存在不显著的正相关关系。本文对于研究政府规模扩张的成因具有重要的现实意义。

This paper uses a panel data of 1999-2011 years in Liaoning Province as a sample, empirically studies the relationship between government size and its influence factors. The study finds, the level of economic development is negative to government size, which proves that the Wagner rule cannot hold in this time-period; relationship between unemployment rate and government size is uncertain, but governmental size has a trend to lessen when level of urbanization is boosting. In addition, we cannot verify the hypothesis of Leviatan; the relationship between foreign direct investment and government size is not significant; there is no significant positive correlation between public service demand and governmental size. This paper has important practical significance for the study of expansion of government size.