政府治理改革下的行政成本上涨研究--基于鲍莫尔成本病理论的分析

An Analysis of Administrative Cost Growthunder the Context of Public Governance Reform——Based on Baumol's Cost Disease Theory

行政成本是政府履行其公共服务提供职能所必须的投入,治理行政成本一直以来不仅是各国政府改革的重要目标,也是中国政府治理改革的主要内容。本文基于鲍莫尔成本病理论对国家治理体系现代化背景下中国行政成本上涨的情况进行研究,结果发现,在短期内"鲍莫尔成本病"在政府服务领域中确实存在,显著地促进了政府行政成本的增长;但就中长期而言,"鲍莫尔成本病"对行政成本的提高并无影响。这表明,政府控制行政成本上涨的要点在于通过转变政府职能和推进公共部门的治理变革以控制政府支出规模的膨胀,而不是简单地压低公务员工资。

The administrative cost is necessary input for the government to perform its function of public service provision.The governance of administrative cost growth is not only an important goal of national government reform around the world,but also the main content of China’s governance reform.Based on the theory of Baumol’s cost disease,this article studies the rise of administrative costs in China in the context of government governance reform.The results show that Baumol Cost Disease does account to some extent of China’s administrative cost growth in the short term,but not in the long run.This indicates that the key for the containment of administrative cost is to control the size of government spending by shifting government functions and promoting governance changes in the public sector,rather than simply controlling the wage levels of civil servants.