财政压力与地方经济增长——来自中国所得税分享改革的政策实验

Fiscal Pressure and Local Economic Growth——An Experiment from China Income Tax Sharing System Reform

本文基于2002年的所得税分享改革构造了强度类DID模型,借助所得税分税关系调整的外生冲击测度财政压力变化,并使用来自城市一级的卫星灯光数据,实证检验了财政压力与地方经济增长之间的关系。研究发现,财政压力显著提高了地区灯光亮度。研究还发现:第一,在财政转移支付净流入地区,财政压力的经济激励效应并不显著;第二,财政压力下,地方政府倾向于支持房地产等地方高税行业的发展,而这种趋向于单一化的发展模式,可能会降低地方经济增长多样性,增加宏观经济风险;第三,所得税分享改革形成的财政压力,约束了地方政府过度的支出竞争,但以土地收入为资金支持开展的税收竞争仍普遍存在。本文的研究在支出分权和决策分权之外,为中国式分权解释地方经济增长奇迹提供了一种新视角,也为更加全面理解分税制度下地方政府的经济增长激励提供了新的经验证据。

In this paper, we construct an ＂as-if＂ DID model on the basis of the 2002 ＂Income Tax Sharing System＂ reform and evaluate the changes in local fiscal pressure based on an exogenous shock that redefine the tax sharing rules between the central government and local governments. By using the DMSP/OLS satellite data at the city-level, we empirically examine the impact of fiscal pressure on the economic growth. We find that fiscal pressure significantly increase the satellite lighting. Furthermore, we obtain the findings as follows. Firstly, the fiscal pressure effects are less profound in cities that receive considerable intergovernmental transfers from high levels of governments. Secondly, the local governments are more likely to help the growth of real estate industry, which can reciprocally bring them considerable sales taxation. However, this homogenized growth pattern might be detrimental for the economic diversification and finally enhance the risk of economical fluctuation. Finally, the fiscal pressure created by the reform restricts the extent to which jurisdictions compete with each other. However, the tax competition still exists because local governments are able to lower the tax rate once they gain enough revenues from land-sales. This paper provides a new explanation for China＇s high-speed growth in addition to expenditure decentralization or administration decentralization. It also offers extra evidence for exploring the growth incentives of local government within the framework of China＇s decentralization.