“省直管县”改革能否提升县级财力水平?

Can the reform of “Province-Managing-County” improve a county fiscal revenue?

将"省直管县"财政体制改革作为拟自然实验,基于全国县级面板数据,利用可有效校正选择偏差问题的PSM-DID方法构造"反事实"状态,估计改革对县级财力水平的平均处理效应.结果显示:改革增加了人均本级财政收入,却减少了人均转移支付水平,且下降幅度较大,致使人均财政总收入减少,表明"省直管县"改革不但无法提升,甚至会在一定程度上恶化县级财政状况.东、中部地区的平均处理效应与全国类似,上述结论具有比较好的稳健性.此外,还进行了影响机制检验,地级市与县、县与县之间的财政竞争以及省对各市、县的协调机制会在一定程度上影响财政体制改革的效果.

This paper takes the fiscal system reform of ＂Province-Managing-County＂ as a natural experiment, and, based on national county panel data, constructs the ＂counterfactual＂ state by using the PSM-DID method that can effectively correct the selection bias problems, and assesses the average treatment effect of the reform on the county government fiscal capacity. The results show that the reform increases per capita fiscal revenue of the county government, but reduces per capita transfer payment; the decline is relatively large, thus lead to a decrease in per capita total fiscal revenue. Hence, the reform of ＂Province-Managing-County＂ not only fails to improve, but to some extent worsens a county＇ s financial situation. The average treatment effect in the East and Central regions is similar to that of the whole nation, and the above conclusions are robust. In addition, a test on the impact mechanism is conducted. The fiscal competition between a prefecture-level city and a county ,between counties, and the coordination mechanism of province to cities and counties all influence the effect of the financial system reform to a certain extent.