新型城镇化背景下的中央地方财政关系调整

Adjustment of Central-local Fiscal Relationship under the New-type Urbanization

健全农业迁移人口市民化机制、完善财政转移支付制度是新时期新型城镇化战略的关键。本文在Blouri&Ehrlich(2020)的基础上,构建了一个包含户籍、人口流动、区域间贸易和集聚外部性的量化空间一般均衡模型,探究了新型城镇化背景下的最优转移支付和分成比例设计。研究发现:(1)目前的财政转移支付政策使各省人均收入平均提高0.9775%,社会整体福利提高了12.6007%,当转移支付达到最优空间分布时,福利水平将在此基础上再提升4.7013%。(2)户籍制度完全放开能够显著促进区域人口流动,并通过“集聚效应”促进生产率增长和社会福利改进。户籍放开后,保持现行最高福利水平的条件下,中央财政转移支出可缩减9.9473%。(3)新型城镇化的实现是以中央转移支付为前提的,而中央转移支付制度的有效运转则取决于中央财政分权比例的提高。因此,在户籍放开的同时,需要提高中央财政分权中的分成比例,才能实现社会最优的财政支出结构和最优社会福利。

To date,China’s urbanization has been largely driven by the migration of rural labor to cities and towns for the long-term residence and employment.However,as the reform of Hukou system(namely,the household registration system) has not been completed,the vast majority of rural migrant workers in cities have not obtained urban Hukou.The difference between permanent urban residents and permanent urban Hukou registered population has been a persistent phenomenon during China’s urbanization.Therefore,the promotion of new-type urbanization is referred to as people-centered urbanization,more specifically,the urbanization aiming to increase the proportion of urban population.The key to the strategy of new-type urbanization in the new era is to improve the citizenization of migrants from rural areas to urban areas and reform the fiscal transfer payment system at the same time.In order to promote the equalization of public services between regions and the coordinated regional development,the central government has repeatedly proposed to address the equalization of public services and citizenization of migrant workers via fiscal transfer payments.The effective implementation depends on the central government’s fiscal resources and the fiscal sharing ratio between the central and local governments.However,the existing literature seldom studies the linkage between the reform of Hukou and the fiscal transfer payment.Based on Blouri & Ehrlich(2020),this paper constructs a quantitative spatial general equilibrium model by incorporating Hukou registration,migration and inter-regional trade.We first quantitatively evaluate the policy effects of fiscal transfer payments under the current Hukou system.Then we study the impact of Hukou system on regional population mobility,income gap,productivity and social welfare,and calculate the optimal fiscal transfer payment and the fiscal sharing ratio after Hukou system reform.The research result are as follows.(1) The current fiscal transfer payment policy has significantly improved productivity and social welfare.Specifically,compared with no-transfer scenario,the average per capita income and social welfare increase by 0.9775% and 12.6007%,respectively.In addition,the second-best fiscal transfer payment system—the optimal fiscal transfer payment system under the current Hukou system—increase the welfare level further by 4.7013%.(2) The liberalization of household registration restrictions significantly promotes regional population mobility,and facilitates the productivity growth and social welfare through the agglomeration effect.Among them,the improvement effect is most obvious in provincial regions like Xinjiang,Liaoning,Beijing,Tianjin,Fujian,and Guangdong.(3) After the liberalization of the household registration restrictions,the transfer expenditure of the central government can be reduced by 9.9473% within the highest-level social welfare at present.With the liberalization of household registration restrictions,the transfer payment of production amenities should be reallocated to the southern and the southeast coastal regions,while transfer payments for investment in transportation infrastructure should be reallocated towards the central region with convenient transportation and regions with low transportation access.(4) The realization of new-type urbanization hinges critically on the central-local transfer payment,as well as the fiscal sharing ratio between the central and local governments.At present,there is still a large gap between the current fiscal sharing ratio and the socially optimal fiscal sharing ratio.The results show that 60% of the 29 samples in this paper need to increase the proportion of contribution to the central finance.Especially,the eight provincial regions of Hebei,Henan,Qinghai,Gansu,Shanxi,Shaanxi and Chongqing need to increase the proportion of contribution to the central finance by at least ten percentage points.Therefore,in the wake of household registration liberalization,it is necessary to increase the proportion of the central government’s fiscal revenue,so as to maximize social welfare.After the liberalization of the household registration restrictions,the adjustment of distribution of transfer payment can not only contribute to the original highest-level welfare,but also help to reduce the central transfer expenditure by 9.9473%.To sum up,as long as the fiscal expenditure controlled by the central government reaches a certain percentage,it is feasible to realize new-type urbanization by adjusting central transfer payments.This paper quantitatively evaluates the policy effects of fiscal transfer payments under the current Hukou system,calculates the optimal fiscal transfer payment and the fiscal sharing ratio after Hukou system reform,and provides a theoretical foundation for the reform of fiscal transfer payment in order to realize new-type urbanization,as well as a new idea for solving China’s current fiscal imbalance problem.