财政分权、地方官员任职特征与通胀水平变动

Fiscal Decentralization,Characteristics of Local Officials and Inflation Level Change

本文试图从制度视角分析我国通胀水平变动的影响因素。具体而言,我们同时考察财政分权、官员治理模式下的地方官员任职特征对地方投资结构的影响,进而通过国有经济部门的预算软约束对通胀水平产生作用。研究结果表明,1979-1997年间,财政收入分权和财政支出分权分别降低和提高了通胀率,年龄较大、任期较长以及曾有中央部门任职经历的地方官员所辖地区通胀率较低。1998-2012年,财政分权对于通胀水平不具有显著影响,而官员治理模式显著降低了通胀水平。因此,在我国现行财政分权体制和官员治理模式下,为了抑制当前通胀水平进一步下降趋势,我国应积极推进稳增长政策。

This paper explores the influence of institutional factors on inflation level. Specifically,we study the effect of fiscal decentralization and local officials＇ characteristics on local investment structure,and further reveal their effect on inflation level through soft budget constraint on state-owned sectors. The results show that fiscal revenue decentralization attenuated the inflation level while fiscal expenditure decentralization had the opposite effect from 1979 to1997. Moreover,the inflation level was negatively correlated with local officials＇ age and tenure,and it was lower when the local official had experience of working in central government departments. However,fiscal decentralization had no significant influence on inflation level from 1998 to 2012,but governance mode of officials was helpful for controlling the inflation level. Therefore,we should stabilize economic growth to restrain downward trend of inflation level under the current fiscal decentralization system and governance mode of officials.