采矿业繁荣与公共品提供

Mining Boom and Public Goods Provision

资源型地区的财政收入高度依赖于采矿业,地方政府对财政资金的有效利用是提升居民福利水平和促进经济社会发展的必要条件。本文从财政收入获取形式影响地方政府行为激励的角度,分析了采矿业繁荣恶化地方公共品提供的机制。然后,文章基于1998—2018年中国地级市层面数据,利用国际矿产资源价格变动作为外生冲击,对采矿业繁荣影响地方公共品提供进行实证检验。结果表明,采矿业繁荣尽管大幅度增加了地方财政收入,但是教育、医疗等民生性公共品供给水平并未因此而提升,基础设施等生产性公共品供给也未因此而改善。进一步研究发现,采矿业繁荣期,财政供养人员数量显著膨胀、财政资金使用效率降低,因而高速增长的财政收入并未有效转化为公共品供给。本文的结论表明,应该强化资源型地区财政资金使用的监督约束机制,提高财政资金使用效率。

The fiscal revenue of resource-based regions is highly dependent on the mining industry,and using the revenue effectively is a necessary condition for improving residents’welfare and promoting economic and social development.From the perspective of the form of fiscal revenue acquisition affects local government behavioral incentives,we analyze the mechanism by which the prosperity of the mining industry deteriorates the provision of local public goods.Based on prefecture-level data of China from 1998 to 2018,the article uses the changes of international mineral resource prices as an exogenous impact to conduct an empirical analysis on the impact of the mining industry’s prosperity on local public goods provision.The results show that although the prosperity of the mining industry has substantially increased the local fiscal revenue,it has not promoted the efficiency of the provision of public goods such as education and medical care,nor has it increased the provision of productive public goods such as infrastructure.Further research shows that during the booming period of mining industry,the number of financial support staff increased significantly and the efficiency of the use of financial funds decreased.Therefore,the rapid growth of fiscal revenues has not been translated into effective supply of public goods.The conclusion of this paper indicates that the supervision and restriction mechanism of the use of financial funds in resource-based areas should be strengthened to improve the efficiency of the financial funds use.