地方政府财政收支竞争策略与居民收入分配

Local Government Competition Strategy of Fiscal Revenue and Expenditure and Residents’Income Distribution

本文构建一个理论分析框架,阐释了地方政府竞争对居民收入分配的影响及其机理,提出核心理论命题;以1998—2005年地级市数据和2005年全国1%人口抽样调查数据为基础,利用工具变量法进行实证检验。研究表明,地方政府竞争增大了居民收入分配差距。原因在于:分税制改革采取财权集中的做法,压缩了地方政府“低税负”收入竞争空间,促使其更多运用“高支出”竞争策略;而在GDP增长为核心的晋升激励下,竞争加剧了地方政府注重基础设施等经济性支出而忽视教育和社会保障等民生性支出的行为偏差;亦促使其更多依靠转移支付收入为扩张的支出筹资,以将支出成本更多通过公共池渠道转嫁给中央和其他辖区政府;更倾向于利用营业税获取自有收入,而尽可能避免对经济具有较大不利影响的企业所得税和增值税等收入的较快增加。这样的收支竞争策略更倾向于增大居民收入分配差距。实证分析证实了上述作用机理,因此,实现分配公平和共享发展需优化完善地方政府治理体系。

This paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework,explains the influence and mechanism of local government competition on residents’income distribution,and puts forward a core theoretical hypothesis.Based on the data of prefecture-level cities from 1998 to 2005 and Population Census data 2005,we employ the instrumental variable method for empirical testing.Studies have shown that local government competition has increased the income distribution gap among residents,which is not conducive to fair distribution.The reason is that reform of tax-sharing system in centralizing financial power substantially reduced the local government’s“low tax”competition space,while encourages local governments to use more“high expenditure”competition strategy.And under the incentive of political promotion with GDP growth as the core,the jurisdiction competition has intensified local government’s behavioral deviations that focus on economic expenditures such as infrastructure but ignoring people’s livelihood expenditures such as education and social security.This also encourages local governments to rely more on transfer payments to finance expansion expenditures,so as to increase the cost of expenditures through public pool channels are passed on to the central government and other jurisdictions.They are more inclined to use business tax to obtain their own income,while avoiding the rapid increase in income such as corporate income tax and value-added tax that has a large adverse impact on the economy.Such income and expenditure competition strategies are more alike to increase the income distribution gap among residents.The empirical analysis better confirms the above logical mechanism and supports the theoretical hypothesis of this paper,indicating that the realization of distribution equity and shared development requires the optimization and improvement of the local government governance system.