中国的经济增长、波动与地区差距——基于经济转型的解释

China’s Economic Growth, Fluctuation and Regional Disparities--An Explanation based on Economic Transition

中国的经济转型在过去的40多年中取得了极大的成功。令人困惑的是,中国这样一个传统的计划体制国家为什么能够实现快速的经济转型?进一步地,与之相关的高速的经济增长、显著的经济波动和较大的地区差距等经济特征又是如何产生的?基于此,在中国式分权的基本制度背景下,可以构建一个统一的框架对上述问题进行回答。其理论框架的核心是,地方政府间的横向竞争及风险厌恶型特征,导致其投资决策行为具有进行相互模仿的内在动力。研究发现:(1)这种模仿行为是构成中国民营经济迅速扩张和经济高速增长的主要动因;(2)模仿行为放大了中央政府偏好对地方政府投资决策的影响作用,引发民营经济发展的“潮起和潮退”,形成了显著的经济波动;(3)“软预算约束”弱化了横向竞争对地方政府发展民营经济的激励作用,导致不同国有企业数量的地区形成所有制结构的差距和经济增长差距。研究的结论对于未来中国提振经济发展动力,平稳经济波动以及协调区域发展具有一定的政策启示。

A key feature of China’s transition period has been the rapid expansion of the private economy,which has been accompanied by high economic growth, significant economic volatility, and large regional disparities. It is puzzling why a traditionally planned country like China would race to a private economy.And how did the relevant economic characteristics arise? This study proposes a unified explanation for the characteristics above under a framework of Chinese style decentralization. Central to our explanation is the political incentive based on relative performance evaluation(RPE), which leads to imitation among subnational governments’ decision. First, the imitation incentivizes subnational governments’ race to privatization and achieves unprecedented economic growth. Second, imitation amplifies the influence of the change in the central government’s preferences on subnational governments’ decision making and triggers the “ ebb and flow” of the private sector, causing economic fluctuation. Third, state-owned enterprises(SOEs) weaken the incentive of RPE on subnational governments through “ soft budget constraint,”creating economic growth gap among regions with different numbers of SOE. This paper has some policy implications for the future of China to boost initiative of economic development, smooth economic fluctuations and coordinate regional development.