财政压力如何影响民生支出

How Does Fiscal Stress Affect Spending on People’s Livelihood?

地方政府财政压力水平及其后续影响值得关注,然而现有文献缺乏理论探讨,对财政压力的测度方式也有待改进。基于理论梳理,本文收集了2014—2019年我国地市级面板数据,综合债务与PPP的财政支出责任测度了财政压力,并利用2009年经济刺激计划时期的官员特征构建了财政压力的工具变量,以检验财政压力对地方政府支出结构的影响。研究发现:第一,当面临财政压力时,地方政府所采取的并非紧缩策略,而是通过平衡策略保障民生支出,这一结论与部分前期文献不同,却与务实市政主义理论的预测相一致,其内在机制是源于财政压力下中央政府影响力的增强;第二,地方政府在分配支出资源时存在“类啄序”,即优先保障民生支出,其次是运转支出,而经济支出最容易被削减。在民生支出中,社保、教育领域被优先支持。以上研究为探索紧缩背景下的地方政府行为带来了一定的启示。

The local fiscal stress and its subsequent impact need to be further explored.However,the current literature lacks theoretical discussions,and the measurement method of fiscal stress needs to be improved.This paper collects city-level panel data of China from 2014 to 2019 and measures the fiscal stress from the perspective of budget solvency,and utilizes the characteristics of mayors in 2009 as the instrumental variable(IV) of fiscal stress to empirically test the impact of fiscal stress on the expenditure structure of local governments.The results suggest that:Firstly,local governments adopt a balancing strategy instead an austerity strategy to safeguard the essential public services such as social welfare,education,and public health when facing rising fiscal stress.The possible mechanism of that is the enhancement of the central government’s influence under fiscal stress.Secondly,there is a pecking order in local governments’ allocation of expenditure resources.That is,redistributive expenditures are prioritized,followed by operating and developmental expenditures.In redistributive expenditures,social welfare and education enjoy high priority.The above research has enlightened exploring the behavior of local governments in the context of austerity.