政府竞争、财政压力及其调节作用研究——以地方政府财政支出偏向为视角

RESEARCH ON GOVERNMENT COMPETITION,FISCAL PRESSURE AND ITS REGULATION——From the Perspective of Local Government Fiscal Expenditure Bias

本文以政府间事权与支出责任划分改革为出发点,基于2009—2017年地级市层面的面板数据,运用系统GMM估计方法审视财政压力、政府竞争与地方政府民生支出偏向之间的相关关系。实证分析结果表明,相较于政府竞争而言,财政压力才是降低地方政府民生支出偏向的主要原因。财政压力对政府竞争具有调节作用,政府竞争对民生支出偏向的反向作用程度显著依赖于财政压力。具体而言,政府竞争对教育、医疗卫生、社会保障与就业支出偏向不具有直接效应,但在财政压力的调节作用下显著影响上述三项支出。本文进一步发现,经济发展水平越低,政府竞争与民生支出偏向之间的相关关系越不显著;地方政府在执行多任务导向型的中央决策时,具有较为明显的自我选择倾向。

This paper takes the reform of inter-governmental power and expenditure responsibility as the starting point.Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities in 2009-2017,the system GMM estimation method is used to examine the correlation between fiscal pressure,government competition and local government’s people’s livelihood expenditure bias.The empirical analysis shows that fiscal pressure is the main reason for lowering the local government’s people’s livelihood expenditure bias compared with government competition.Fiscal pressure has a regulatory effect on government competition,and the degree of reversed effect of government competition on people’s livelihood expenditure bias depends significantly on fiscal pressure.Government competition has no direct effect on education,health care,social security and employment expenditure bias,but indirectly affects the above three expenditures under the adjustment of fiscal pressure.The lower the level of economic development,the less relevant the relationship between government competition and people’s livelihood expenditure bias.When implementing multi-task-oriented central decision-making,local governments have a clear tendency to self-select.