地方财政压力与政府支出效率——基于所得税分享改革的准自然实验分析

Local Fiscal Pressure and Government Expenditure Efficiency:The Reform of Income Tax Sharing as a Quasi-natural Experiment

经济转型背景下,地方政府如何释放财政压力备受关注。除努力增加自有财力外,提高政府支出效率也是重要的减压途径。本文借助2002年所得税分享改革捕捉地级市层面财政压力的外生变化,采用强度双重差分方法实证考察了地方财政压力对政府支出效率的影响。研究结果发现:(1)所得税分享改革造成的相对财政压力显著提高了地方政府的支出效率水平,且改革效应呈现先上升后下降的倒U型趋势。(2)地方财政压力对政府支出效率的影响并非一成不变。具体来讲,地方财政压力对政府支出效率的影响随着支出效率的提高而不断减弱、随着政府间竞争程度的加剧而不断增强。(3)在“压力型”财政激励下,地方政府倾向于通过加强政府审计监管而非优化支出结构的方式来实现支出效率的提升。文章从财政支出效率视角揭示了地方政府释放财政压力的具体路径和实现手段,对于解读中国式“压力型”财政激励下的地方政府行为具有参考价值,可为中央政府实施偏向性扶持政策提供理论依据。

Summary:Since the establishment of the tax-sharing system in 1994,the relationship between China s central and local governments has evolved according to the principle of an upward shift of fiscal power and a downward shift of administrative power.Several major fiscal and tax system reforms,such as the income tax sharing reform,the abolition of the agricultural tax and the replacement of the business tax with a value-added tax,have greatly weakened the original fiscal power of local governments.In addition,because many government expenditure responsibilities are derived from the restructuring of state-owned enterprises and the process of urbanization,local fiscal pressure is becoming increasingly apparent.On the supply-side,unprecedented tax and fee reductions have occurred in various regions,making the challenges that local finances face more severe.Finance is the foundation and an important pillar of national governance.Fiscal pressure has weakened the ability of local governments to perform macroeconomic regulation and to supply public services,which is not conducive to local economic development and social stability.Therefore,it is urgent to seek solutions to the problems that local governments face in their finances.[JP2]Theoretically,local governments can ease their fiscal pressure by increasing their tax collection efforts,increasing land finance and other sources of revenue or by improving the efficiency of the use of fiscal funds.Most scholars focus on the various income-increasing ways,ignoring the efficiency of fiscal expenditures,which is not conducive to the comprehensive interpretation of the strategies that local governments use to cope with fiscal pressure.This focus also makes it difficult to grasp the self-decompression space for local governments accurately.Against this background,we systematically examine the impact of local fiscal pressure on government expenditure efficiency and reveal the transmission mechanism between the two.We perform a quasi-natural experimental analysis based on panel data of prefecture-level cities in China with exogeneity coming from the 2002 income tax sharing reform.The results show the following.(1)The relative fiscal pressure caused by the income tax sharing reform has significantly improved the expenditure efficiency of local governments and that the effect of the reform shows an inverted U-shaped evolution trend.(2)The impact of local fiscal pressure on the efficiency of government expenditures is not constant;the impact of local fiscal pressure on the efficiency of government expenditures decreases with the improvement in the efficiency of expenditures and increases with the intensification of inter-governmental competition.(3)Under“pressure-type”fiscal incentives,local governments tend to improve their expenditure efficiency by strengthening government audit supervision rather than by optimizing the expenditure structure.This study has important reference value for the comprehensive interpretation of local governments behavior in response to the“pressure-type”of financial incentives and provides an important theoretical basis for the implementation of preferential support policies by the central government.We make four contributions in this paper.First,unlike most studies focus on local governments strategies of reducing pressure by increasing revenue,we systematically examine the impact of local fiscal pressure on government expenditure efficiency.This focus parallels research on local government behavior under the Chinese“pressure-type”system and is a horizontal expansion of this theme.Second,we use the 2002 income tax sharing reform as an opportunity to capture an exogenous change in financial pressure and overcome the endogeneity problem.Compared with the literature,we fully consider the tax-sharing problem between the provincial and lower levels of government and the pressure index we construct is more accurate and effective.Third,using the dual perspective of fiscal fund allocation and supervision,we examine how local fiscal pressure affects the efficiency of government expenditures and provide a preliminarily answer to the key question of how to improve the efficiency of local government expenditures with“pressure-type”fiscal incentives.Finally,we reveal the potential incentives behind the audit and supervision of local governments from the perspective of political economy.