中国式财政分权、辖区竞争与地方政府投资——基于省级面板数据的分析

The Chinese-style Fiscal Decentralization, Jurisdictional Competition and Local Government Investment——Analysis Based on Provincial Panel Data

投资是地方政府推动经济增长的重要政策手段,财政激励和政治晋升是影响地方政府经济行为的重要动机。利用全国30个省级政府面板数据,实证分析财政分权和辖区竞争对地方政府投资的影响。实证结果表明:财政分权度较高的地区,市场主体的力量更为活跃,预算内资金来源的地方政府投资的力度反而较弱;以全社会固定资产投资度量地方政府投资时,财政分权与地方政府投资正相关,反映着财政分权使地方政府有能力和空间对市场主体施加影响力,以扩大投资规模;辖区竞争与地方政府投资之间在各种回归分析中均正相关,反映着地方政府存在通过扩大投资,优化投资环境,吸引流动性资本的倾向。

Investment is an important policy means for local governments to promote economic growth. Financial incentives and political promotion are important motives that affect the economic behavior of local governments. Based on panel data of 30 provincial governments, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of fiscal decentralization and jurisdictional competition on local government investment. The main conclusions are: in areas with higher fiscal decentralization, the power of market entities is more active as opposed to a weaker government investment in areas whose source of funds is within the budget. When measuring the investment of local governments against the fixed assets investment of the whole society, fiscal decentralization is positively related to local government investment, reflecting that fiscal decentralization enables local governments to have the ability and space to exert influence on market entities so as to expand the scale of investment. The competition among jurisdictions and local government investment are positively correlated in various regression analyses, reflecting the tendency of local governments to expand investment, optimize investment environment and attract liquid capital.