财政分权的成因重塑:地理经济学视角——以浙江省为例

What Determinantes Fiscal Decentralization Formation:From the Perspective of Geography Economics——Evidence from Zhejiang Province in China

地理条件是影响人类活动的重要因素,财政分权作为实现社会有效治理的一项制度安排,其形成可能受到地理因素的影响。为检验自然地理条件对财政分权的影响,本文以浙江省为例,采用ASTER GDEM 30M分辨率数字高程数据识别提取以坡度、高程和地形起伏度为表征的地形复杂度,并将样本下沉至县级层面,构建2004-2019年浙江省60个县级行政单位的面板数据,采用Hausman-Taylor估计和固定效应模型对模型进行检验。结果表明:(1)财政分权在收入、支出和自主度三种表现形式下均与地形复杂度呈现显著正相关关系,地形更为复杂的地区拥有更高的财政分权水平。(2)机制检验发现农业发展和企业规模这两种人类活动能够显著削弱地形对于财政分权的影响。(3)对样本对象进行时空分割,发现以“撤县立市”和“营改增”试点为代表的政策显著弱化了地形因素对于财政分权的影响。

Geographical conditions are important factors affecting human activities.As an institutional arrangement to achieve effective governance,fiscal decentralization system,its formation may be affected by geographical factors.In order to test the impact of nature geography on fiscal decentralization.Using ASTER DEM 30m data to extract the terrain complexity comprised of the three factors of slope,altitude and surface fragmentation.Our empirical estimation employs a panel data set for 60 counties for the period 2004-2018 in Zhejiang province.The study shows that:(1)Natural geography as a determinant of fiscal decentralization has a significant positive impact on fiscal decentralization,counties with higher terrain complexity enjoy greater fiscal autonomy.(2)Mechanism test found that agriculture development and enterprise scale can weaken the impact from terrain complexity to fiscal decentralization.(3)Such as the policy of County to City upgrading and the reform of replacing business tax for VAT can totally distort the impact of terrain factors on the formation of the fiscal decentralization system.