平等与激励权衡下的地方公共服务均等化评估——内涵及实证分析框架

Equalization Assessment of Local Public Services under the Tradeoff between Equality and Incentive: The Connotation and Empirical Framework

本文提出一个兼顾平等和激励双重目标的公共服务均等化思路,其核心是通过财政资金的均等化配置,既为财政能力不足地区提供财政补助,促进地方政府间财政能力的大致均衡,又避免财政补助对地方政府的公共服务供给行为产生扭曲,激励供给努力不足的地方政府更有效地使用财政资金。据此,设计一个以泰尔指数为基础,由"测度、分组、分解、优化"四个步骤构成的公共服务均等化评估框架;利用这一框架和中国省一级义务教育和医疗卫生服务的数据,评估两类公共服务供给的区域非均等化程度。实证结果显示:与实现平等与激励权衡的理想状态相比,中国各省区普遍存在义务教育和医疗卫生服务的过度供给或供给不足问题。其中,东部地区主要表现为两类公共服务的过度供给,中西部地区主要表现为两类公共服务的供给不足。均等化政策设计的关键是:为东部地区提供更好的财政激励,促进其公共服务供给努力程度的提高;优化中西部地区公共服务供给环境,为其更好地供给公共服务创造条件。

This paper proposes an idea of public service equalization which can achieve the tradeoff between equality and incentive, whose core is with the local government as the main body, redistributes the fiscal funds without distort public services provision effort of local government to promote inter-local governments＇ fiscal capacity roughly balanced. Based on this idea, we design a public service equalization assessment framework, which constitutes by four steps of ＂measure, grouping, decomposition, and optimization＂. We use this framework and Chinese provincial data of compulsory education and health services to assess the degree of imbalance among provinces. The empirical results show： there is oversupply or insufficient supply of compulsory education and health services in China compared with the ideal state in which the tradeoff between equality and incentive has been achieved. Eastern region has showed the oversupply problem, while the central and western regions have showed insufficient supply problem. We propose following policy recommendations： provide better fiscal incentives for the eastern region to promote local government＇ s provision effort; improve the provision environment of central and western regions to create good condition to supply public services.