中国地方政府的“相机抉择依赖症”与地区经济波动

The Discretion-Dependence of China's Local Government and Regional Economic Fluctuation

近年来,土地财政和地方融资平台的出现使得现有财政体制对地方政府行为的约束出现软化的迹象。在这一制度环境下,地方政府在制定相机性财政政策时更少地基于稳定地区经济考虑,而更大程度上是为了争取财政收入和地区利益。这使地方政府的财政活动长期呈现出较大的随机性特征,不利于地区经济稳定。通过对地方政府的财政政策进行分解,利用我国省级面板数据发现,地方政府的相机性财政政策对异常消费具有一定的平抑作用,但加剧了异常投资的波动。相对消费波动,投资波动是经济波动的主要来源。所以我国地方政府的相机性财政政策实际上隐含了较大的经济波动风险。这一结论为下一步财政体制改革中注重构建对地方政府经济活动的内生制度约束提供了经验支撑。

In recent years, the appearance of land finance and local financing platform makes the constraint of the existing fiscal system on the behaviors of local governments become sorer. Under such institutional environment, when making fiscal policies of discretionary nature, local governments would consider less the regional economic stabilization, but focus more on fiscal revenue and local interests. This would cause the fiscal activities of the local governments to display more traits of ran- donmess, which goes against the regional economic stabilization. Though decomposing the fiscal poli- cies of local governments and making use of the provincial panel data, it is found that the local dis- cretionary fiscal policy can play a certain role in stabilizing the abnormal consumption, but would ag- gravate the abnormal fluctuation of investment. Compared with the consumption fluctuation, the invest- ment fluctuation is usually the main cause for economic fluctuation. Therefore, as a matter of fact, the discretionary fiscal policies of China＇s local governments contain larger implicit economic fluctuation risks. This conclusion provides empirical support for constructing the endogenous institutional constraints on the economic activities of local governments in the next step of fiscal system reform.