增加地方政府公共投入能够缩小城乡收入差距吗?

Research on Whether the Local Governments Can Effectively Narrow the Income Urban-rural Gap by Increasing Public Investment

缩小城乡收入差距是政府统筹城乡发展的战略议题,而能否通过增加地方政府公共投入有效缩小城乡收入差距在学界尚未达成共识。文章基于省际面板数据将地方财政支出指标分为地方财政支出规模、保障性财政支出比重和投资性财政支出比重,并运用基准回归模型与门槛效应模型探究地方财政支出与城乡收入差距之间的内在联系。结论如下:提高地方财政支出规模和保障性财政支出比重会缩小城乡收入差距,提高投资性财政支出比重会拉大城乡收入差距,而且三者对城乡收入差距均存在门槛效应;因此不能盲目依靠增加地方财政支出规模和保障性财政支出比重或减少投资性财政支出比重来缩小城乡收入差距。

Whether the local governments can effectively narrow the income urban rural gap by increasing public investment has not yet reached a consensus in the academic community.Based on the provincial panel data,and the local fiscal expenditure index is divided into fiscal expenditure scale,security expenditure and investment expenditure.This paper employs benchmark regression model and panel threshold model to explore the relationship between local fiscal expenditure and urban rural income gap.The results are as follows:Improving fiscal expenditure scale and the proportion of security expenditure will narrow the urban rural income gap;increasing the proportion of investment expenditure will widen the urban rural income gap,and the three variables have threshold effect on urban rural income gap.Therefore,we cannot blindly rely on increasing local government fiscal expenditure scale and security expenditure or reducing the investment expenditure proportion to narrow rural urban income gap.