中国城镇化发展的变结构协整分析:财政分权视角

Cointegration Analysis with Regime Shifts of Urbanization in China:From the Perspective of Fiscal Decentralization

中国的城镇化虽然发展迅速,但人口城镇化与土地城镇化的不协调性却很突出,产生这种现象的制度根源在于财政分权和二元土地制度以及户籍制度。本文基于改革开放后的时间序列数据,运用Gregory-Hansen检验进行变结构协整分析。分析结果表明:分税制改革后,中国城镇化的发展确实产生了结构性突变,且结构突变点刚好发生在1994年分税制改革之后的一两年内。结果还发现,财政分权、工业化、人口城镇化和土地城镇化之间存在长期的协整关系;且财政分权促进了土地城镇化的发展,却对人口城镇化具有抑制作用。进一步运用面板数据模型的实证也表明,无论是财政收入分权还是财政支出分权都对人均建成区面积具有显著的正向影响作用。这些证据表明财政分权是人口城镇化与土地城镇化非协调性发展的重要制度根源之一。未来中国要真正实现新型城镇化,必须推进包括财税体制、土地制度及户籍制度在内的一揽子改革,且应从整体上协调推进这些改革。

The development of China＇s urbanization is striking. It is perhaps the greatest human-resettlement experiment in history. Between 1978 and 2013, the fraction of the nation＇s population dwelling in cities increased from 17.9 % to 53. 7%, with an average annual increase of more than one percentage. Although China＇ s urbanization has made great achievements, there are also many challenges and problems. Land urbanization is the most prominent problem and the use of construction land is extensive and inefficient. In the past decade from 2000 to 2011, the urban built-up land area in China has grown by 76.4%-faster than its urban population, which grew by 46%. Thus the population urbanization and land urbanization are obviously uncoordinated. So what are the key factors that led to the emergence of this kind of disharmony in China＇s urbanization development？ The academic and policy circles have given great attention to this issue. The combination of political centralization and economic decentralization is the core of Chinese decentralization system, and the fundamental institutions for people to understand China＇s economic transformation and development, which is also called regionally decentralized authoritarian regime. As the core component of economic decentralization, fiscal decentralization not only has a profound impact on China＇s economic growth and transformation, but also provides a good cut-in point for understanding the uncoordinated development of China＇s urbanization. In the current fiscal decentralization system, the local governments have a strong incentive to promote the development of land urbanization, but little incentive to promote the development of population urbanization. From the perspective of local government behavior, the local government＇s income is far greater than its cost in the implementation of land urbanization. The local governments can not only obtain the land release income, but also use land to attract investment to promote economic growth. At the same time, the existing land requisition system also allows the government to acquire a lot of land with very low cost. However, the local government＇s income is far less than its cost in the implementation of population urbanization at least in the short term. Therefore, the uncoordinated development between population urbanization and land urbanization is the result of the rational choice of local government. It is worth noting that the monopolistic land market and the imperfect household registration system are important institutional conditions for local government to make these rational choices. The combination of the three major institutional factors, which are the fiscal decentralization, the dual land system and the household registration system, makes the disharmony of China＇s population urbanization and land urbanization become a persistent phenomenon. Specifically, the local governments will be more dependent on land transfer revenue under the fiscal pressure, which lead to the unique land finance in China. On the other hand, the bias of fiscal expenditure of local governments is pervasive, which exhibits ＂spending for the economic growth and promotion＂ rather than for the sake of the citizens. Local governments will be spending more money on infrastructures, and neglect of public services. This kind of spending bias will bring about regional economic growth and the rapid expansion of urban construction land, but seriously hinder the development of population urbanization. All in all, the local government will actively promote land urbanization, and passively promote population urbanization. Based on the time-serie^data dating from the Reform and Opening up, this paper uses Gregory-Hansen cointegration test to see whether there exists structural change in the urbanization in China. The empirical analysis shows that there indeed exists structural change in the urbanization in China and this happens in the following two years of the reform of tax sharing system. This shows that the tax sharing system is an important institutional change which may change the behavior patterns of local governments. It thus brings the structural changes in the development mechanism of urbanization. Further, there exists a long-run stable cointegration relationship between fiscal decentralization, industrialization, population urbanization and land urbanization. In this paper, the conventional cointegration analysis without regime shifts is also applied. Whose results indicate that there exists a long-run stable cointegration relationship among the above four variables, while the coefficieney of fiscal decentralization is not consistent with theoretical prediction. So this co-integration relationship is lack of realistic economic significance. Compared to the conventional cointegration analysis, the cointegration analysis with regime shifts exhibits greater superiority and can better describe the development mechanism of urbanization in China during the transition period. The estimated results of the cointegration equation with regime shifts indicate that the fiscal decentralization promotes the development of land urbanization, while curbs the development of population urbanization. In order to further examine the effect of fiscal decentralization on urbanization, this paper builds a panel data model using the provincial data from 2004 to 2013 to support the previous conclusion. The estimation results of the panel data model also shows that both fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal expenditure decentralization have a significant positive impact on the per capita built-up area. These results show that, under the influence of fiscal decentralization, the expansion of urban built-up area is more rapid than that of urban population, which brings about uncoordinated development of land urbanization and population urbanization. Whether the fixed effects model or random effects model is used, the corresponding estimation results are relatively robust and consistent. These evidences further confirm that fiscal decentralization is an important origin of the lack of coordination between population urbanization and land urbanization. At present, China is vigorously promoting the new-type urbanization, whose core is to achieve people-centred urbanization. In order to realize China＇s new-type urbanization dream in the future, it is necessary to solve the lack of coordination between population urbanization and land urbanization, and a series of related problems. The government has to implement a package of reforms including fiscal and taxation systems, land system and household registration system, and should coordinate the promotion of these reforms as a whole.