“省直管县”财政改革与县级财政教育支出——基于湖南省数据的准实验研究

Province-Managing-County Fiscal Reform and Educational Expenditure of County Finance——A Quasi-experimental Study Based on Panel Data in Hunan Province

“省直管县”财政体制改革对于增强县级政府财政自主权,提高县级义务教育经费供给水平具有重要的政策意义。本文基于湖南省2006~2013年的县级面板数据,采用DID和DID-PSM方法评估“省直管县”财政改革对县级教育财政支出的影响。实证分析结果显示,改革降低了县级财政的教育支出比例,但在统计上不显著。在有效控制选择偏差后,改革呈现出显著的负向效果。通过对制度和政策的分析发现,这与湖南省特殊的激励机制设计等有密切的关系。未来深化改革时,需进一步加强对县级财政的监管力度,在保证转移支付分配机制公平的同时,依据教育投入努力程度等方面进行挂钩奖励,在省内民族地区保持更为谨慎的态度。

Province-Managing-County ( PMC ) Fiscal Reform has great policy significance to strengthen financial autonomy and increase the educational expenditure of counties. Based on the county panel data of Hunan province from 2006-2013, this paper establishes a metering model and uses DID and DID-PSM to evaluate the effect of PMC fiscal reform on the educational expenditure of county finance. The result shows that the reform has reduced the proportion of fiscal educational expenditure, which is not statistically significant. After the selection bias is effectively controlled, the reform has a significant negative effect on the expenditure. Policy analysis finds that the effect is closely related to the design of special incentive mechanism in Hunan province. In the future, Hunan province should further strengthen the supervision of the county, pay the reward according to the input efforts in education, ensure the fairness of the transfer payment distribution mechanism as well as maintain a more cautious attitude in ethnic areas.