行政性分权与地区市场分割——基于地级市的研究

Administrative Decentralization and Market Segmentation——Study Focus on Prefectures

中国的经济体制改革实际是向市场“松绑放权”的过程,改革主要包括多级政府内部的行政性分权和政府向企业的经济性分权。其中行政性分权在政府行政框架下分解管理职能的同时赋予地方政府对市场的行政干预权。由此,在地区利益主导下可能引发市场分割,相关假说有待实证检验。“撤县设区”和“省直管县”作为中国行政管理体制改革的重要探索,为外生识别行政性分权对区域市场整合提供了契机。本文从地级市层面切入,利用“撤县设区”和“省直管县”两项政策系统刻画行政资源向地级市政府的集中和分散。在此基础上借鉴双重差分的思想,首次分析纵向政府间行政性分权对横向城市间市场分割的影响。研究发现,“撤县设区”和“省直管县”通过改变政府间行政性分权程度,导致城市间市场分割程度呈相反方向变动:“撤县设区”加强地级市政府的统筹能力,加剧城市间市场分割;而“省直管县”则削弱地级市政府的干预能力,减小城市间市场分割。行政区管理层级的纵向调整影响经济区区域市场的横向联系。以上发现对于政府间事权划分和行政管理体制改革具有重大启示意义。

Chinese reform of economic system is actually a process of“deregulation and decentralizing”to the market,which includes administrative decentralization within multi-level governments and economic decentralization from governments to enterprises.Among them,administrative decentralization within government administrative framework decomposes governments management function and thus empowers local governments to impose administrative intervention on market.Therefore,driven by regional interests,market segmentation may be triggered by local governments.Relevant hypothesis need to be tested empirically.“City-County-Mergers”and“Province-Managing-County”are important exploration of reform of China s administrative management system,which provide exogenous policy shocks to test the impact of administrative decentralization on market segmentation.This paper,shedding light on prefectures,uses these two policy to systematically capture the concentration and dispersion of administrative resources to prefectural governments,then draws idea from(Difference-in-difference)DID,and analyzes the impact of administrative decentralization among multi-level governments on market segmentation between prefectures.Study shows that the degree of market segmentation between cities changes in the opposite direction after reforms:“City-County-Mergers”improves the coordinate capacity of prefectural governments and thus intensifies market segmentation between cities;While“Province-Managing-County”dampens the intervention capacity of prefectural governments,and weakens market segmentation between cities.Vertical adjustment of administrative district affects horizontal linkage between regional markets of economic zone.These findings provide great implications for the division of governments function and the reform of administrative management system.