土地财政是公共品供给结构失衡的真正推手吗?

Is Land-based Finance the Prominent Cause of the Imbalanced Structure in the Public Goods Supply?

地方公共品是促进区域经济增长和提升辖区居民福利的重要保障,也是地方政府发挥职能的重要抓手。然而,与基础设施等经济性公共品供给快速发展相比,我国教育、医疗等非经济性公共品供给远远不足。地方公共品供给结构的经济偏向,会对经济社会发展产生持续的负面影响,一方面会导致民生类公共品供给不足,进而影响居民幸福感的提升,另一方面还将导致居民储蓄率升高,消费比重下降,不利于消费升级和经济结构转型发展。目前学界的主流观点认为,土地财政作为城市建设资金的主要来源,是导致经济性公共品供给偏向的重要原因。但是,如果进行深入的逻辑分析就能发现,"土地财政"仅仅是地方政府提供公共品的主要资金来源,激励机制可能才是导致公共品供给结构失衡这一政府行为的最根本原因,因此探讨不同激励水平下土地财政对公共品供给结构的影响具有重要的意义。基于上述理解,从政府官员及其激励出发,利用2004-2013年地级市面板数据,实证检验官员年龄、学历、任期和来源地等不同特征所引致的晋升激励差异下土地财政对公共品供给的影响。研究发现,土地财政对地方经济性公共品供给具有显著的促进作用,而对非经济性公共品则具有显著的抑制作用或没有影响。土地财政对公共品供给的作用随所在地官员特征呈现出差异,年龄较小、任期较短、学历较高和本省来源等晋升预期更强的官员辖区内,土地财政对经济性公共品供给的促进作用更为显著。上述结论意味着,地方官员晋升激励在土地财政与公共品供给中扮演了重要角色,重构激励是优化公共品供给结构的关键,随着我国经济从高速增长转向高质量发展,政府需弱化对经济增速的考核,加大民生类指标的权重,引导土地财政支出向教育、医疗等民生类公共品倾斜,从而促进人民生活品质的提升。

Local public goods can serve as important guarantee to promote regional economic growth and the welfare of residents. However,the supply of non-economic public goods, such as education and medical care, is insufficient compared with that of fast-growing economic public goods, such as infrastructure in China. The bias on economic factors will have a lasting negative impact on economic and social developments. It will result in the inadequate supply of people's livelihood and affect residents* happiness index,and in the meanwhile,lead to a higher deposit rate and lower consumption rate, which is un-conducive for consumption upgrading and economic restructuring. The mainstream viewpoint among researchers is that land-based finance,as the main source of urban construction funds,is the prominent cause of imbalanced structure of public goods supply. However,the comprehensive logical analysis reveals that the incentive mechanism is the most fundamental cause of the government behavior that causes this imbalance. Thus, it is of great significance to discuss the impact of land-based finance under different promotion incentives. Based on the above assertion, this paper held an empirical analysis on the panel data of prefecture-level c?ies in 2004 ?2013 and examined the impact of various features of officials,such as age,education, tenure and hometown. The study finds that land-based finance has a significant positive effect on the economic public goods supply and has a constraining effect or no effect on non-economic public goods supply. The influence of land-based finance on public goods supply varies with different features of local officials. The influence is more significant in the districts where lo-cal officials with younger age,shorter tenure,higher education degree, birthplace in the. governing province and stronger ex-pec tation of promotion. It can be concluded that restructuring incentives of local officials are crucial for optimizing the supply structure. The emphasis of China's economy has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development, and the focus of assessment should be correspondently shifted from economic growth to the people's livelihood.