中央政府均衡性转移支付影响了地方政府支出结构吗?

Does Equalization Transfer Payment Affect the Structure ofLocal Government Expenditure?

近年来,由于地方政府的财政收支缺口不断扩大,中央政府的转移支付对均衡央地政府之间财政关系的作用也日益重要。首先,文章尝试在巴罗模型中嵌入中央政府转移支付来构建地方政府支出决策的分析框架,证明了中央政府的转移支付与地方政府的支出结构之间具有非线性关系。其次,文章通过建立面板分位数回归模型,研究发现中央政府的均衡性转移支付对地方政府支出结构的影响不仅取决于地方政府支出结构的自身变动,还与中央政府均衡性转移支付的占比变动情况有关。最后,把中央政府的均衡性转移支付作为门槛变量,建立面板门槛分位数回归模型,进一步研究发现当中央政府的均衡性转移支付占比超过门槛值0.4274时,中央政府的均衡性转移支付也会促进地方政府加大生产性支出,从而抑制非生产性的民生公共服务供给。以上研究结论不仅对于构建权责清晰、财力协调和区域均衡的新型央地政府之间的财政关系具有十分重要的理论和现实意义,而且有助于加快建立现代财政制度。

The 1994 “tax-sharing” reform started under the background of a sharp decline in governmentfinancial resources and a weakening of macro-control capabilities. Although the income division betweenthe central government and local governments has been well regulated,the premise of political centralizationdetermines that China’s decentralization institutional reform will increase the central government’s financialconcentration and macro-control capabilities as one of the reform goals. Under China’s fiscal decentralizationsystem,the asymmetry between income decentralization and expenditure decentralization undoubtedly aggravatedthe mismatch of local governments’ financial resources and authority,which requires that the central government’stransfer payment plays a pivotal role in balancing intergovernmental fiscal relations.First,we construct the local government expenditure equation including the central government’s transferpayment in the Barro model framework,and then solve the optimal solution of the Cobb-Douglas productionfunction considering the central government’s transfer payment and local government expenditure,therebytheoretically proving that the central government’s transfer payment has a non-linear effect on the structure oflocal government expenditure.Second,a panel quantile regression model is established to analyze the impact of the central government’sequalization transfer on the structure of local government expenditure,and the non-linear impact of the centralgovernment’s equalization transfer is verified. When the proportion of local governments’ productive expenditureis in the relatively low 10% and 25% quintiles,the growth of the central government’s equalizationtransfer payment will cause local governments to increase productive expenditure. However,when local governments’productive expenditure accounts for more than a half,the impact of the central government’s equalizationtransfer payment on the structure of local government expenditure changes from positive to negative.After this,this paper takes the central government’s equalization transfer payment as the threshold variable,and further establishes a panel threshold quantile regression model to examine the impact of the centralgovernment’s equalization transfer payment proportion on the structure of local government expenditure.Constructing a new type of intergovernmental fiscal relationship which is compatible with incentives isnot only conducive to accelerating the establishment of a modern fiscal system,but also related to the modernizationof the national governance system and the improvement of governance capabilities. The above researchconclusions of this paper not only have very important theoretical and practical significance for the constructionof a new type of central-regional fiscal relationship with clear powers and responsibilities,financialcoordination and regional balance in the new era,but also help to accelerate the establishment of a modern financialsystem.