财政分权体制下地方政府环境规制的治污效应研究

Pollution Control Effect of Local Government Environmental Regulation under Fiscal Decentralization System

在财政分权背景下,基于2004-2017年30个省份的面板数据,使用系统GMM和门槛回归等方法,从财政支出和税收约束两个维度评估地方政府的环境规制行为对遏制环境污染和改善环境质量的政策效果,检验财政分权的直接污染效应、FDI的治污效应及二者的交互效应和区域差异。研究发现:节能环保财政支出和工业污染治理投资存在不显著的治污效应和单一门槛效应,该效应随地方财政分权程度的提高相应减弱;广义环境资源税收的总量效率和结构效率存在显著差异,其收入总量未能有效遏制环境污染加剧,且存在随财政分权程度提高而增强的双门槛效应,征收资源税、房产税等有利于减少污染物排放;财政分权程度提高会直接加剧环境污染且呈现区域异质性,FDI的流入会减弱这种作用但其治污效应不存在显著的地区差异。提出优化以财政收支为主的环境规制手段、调整和完善资源环境类税收体系以及健全政府间环境治理的激励相容机制的政策建议。

Under the background of fiscal decentralization, this paper, based on the panel data of 30 provinces from 2004 to 2017 and by adopting the methods of system GMM and threshold regression, evaluates the policy effect of local government environmental regulation on curbing environmental pollution and improving environmental quality from the dimensions of fiscal expenditure and tax restraint, and examines the direct pollution effect of fiscal decentralization, FDI’s pollution control effect as well as the interaction effect and regional difference between them two. The results show that there exist a non-significant pollution control effect and a single threshold effect between the fiscal expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection and the investment in industrial pollution control, which decrease with the increase of local finance decentralization;there exists a significant difference between the total efficiency and structural efficiency of broad environmental resources taxation, and its total revenue fails to effectively curb the aggravation of environmental pollution while the double threshold effect is enhanced with the increase of fiscal decentralization, and the collection of resources tax and real estate tax helps to reduce pollutant emissions;and that increased fiscal decentralization can directly aggravate environmental pollution with regional heterogeneity, and FDI inflow will weaken such an effect without significant regional difference in its pollution control effect. Such policy suggestions is put forward as optimizing the environmental regulation means based on fiscal revenue and expenditure, adjusting and perfecting the resources and environment tax system, and constructing the incentive compatible mechanism of intergovernmental environmental governance.