一般性转移支付分配机制消除了政治关联效应吗?

Does Distribution Mechanism of General Transfer Payment Eliminate the Effect of Political Connection?

政治家的个人行为可能对转移支付分配产生扭曲作用,降低分配效率,因此许多国家都采用公式法确定政府间转移支付分配方案,以此限制政治因素的负面影响。本文以中国2011—2018年一般性转移支付和财政部领导成员的政治关联为研究对象,讨论公式化的一般性转移支付分配机制是否消除了政治关联效应。研究结果显示,财政部领导成员的政治关联依旧对一般性转移支付分配具有显著影响,领导成员的人数越多、成员在结构上越重要,其来源地所获得的一般性转移支付越多;任期内的政治关联作用具有倒U型曲线特征,并随领导成员的卸任而消失;中国共产党中央财经委员会和全国人民代表大会的预案审查制度显著弱化了政治关联对一般性转移支付分配的影响。据此,本文认为,仅依靠公式化的计算方法并不能完全消除一般性转移支付分配机制中存在的政治因素,完善的审查监督制度是提高分配机制效率的有效手段。

The individual behavior of politicians may distort the distribution of intergovernmental transfer payment and reduce the efficiency of distribution.In order to limit the negative influence of political factors, many countries adopt the formula method to determine the distribution scheme of intergovernmental transfer payment.This paper takes China’s general transfer payment and the political connection of the leading members of the Ministry of Finance from 2011 to 2020 as the research objects and discusses whether the formulaic allocation mechanism of general transfer payment eliminates the effect of political connection.The results show that the political connection of the leading members of the Ministry of Finance still has a significant impact on the distribution of general transfer payment.The provinces receive more general transfer payment if the number of leading members is more or the structure of membership is more important.During the tenure, the political connection has the inverted U-shaped characteristics and disappears with the outgoing of leading members.The preplan censorship executed by the Financial and Economic Committee and National People’s Congress has significantly weakened the influence of political connection on general transfer payment distribution.Therefore, only relying on the formulaic calculation method, the political factors in the distribution mechanism of general transfers cannot be completely eliminated, while optimizing the censorship and supervision system is an effective means to improve the efficiency of the distribution mechanism.