粮食生产激励能促进农民增收和县域经济发展吗?——基于产粮大县奖励政策的准自然实验

Can Grain Production Incentives Promote Farmers’ Incomes and County Economic Development? A Quasinatural Experiment Based on the Incentive Policy for Large Grain-producing Counties

调动农民种粮和地方政府抓好粮食生产的积极性是保障国家粮食安全的重要基础。文章结合理论分析,利用2005-2019年1 482个区县的面板数据,将2005年实施的产粮大县奖励政策视为一项准自然实验,使用空间断点回归设计,识别产粮大县奖励政策对农民增收和县域经济发展的影响及其作用机理。研究发现:从整体上讲,奖励政策对农民增收产生了显著的正向影响,而产粮大县的经济发展并未从该政策中获益,但是该政策可以显著促进贫困落后地区的县域经济发展。动态分析显示,奖励政策对农民增收和县域经济发展的作用效果在各年间波动较大。机制分析表明,奖励政策可以通过改善农业生产条件,提高生产性公共品供给和教育公共品供给来实现农民增收和落后地区的经济发展。政策有效性检验表明,该政策在整体上未能改善产粮大县地方政府的财政收支压力。文章结论表明,奖励政策可以促进农民增收和落后地区的县域经济发展,但有关部门仍须对该政策进行适当调整,切实缓解产粮大县的财政收支压力,提高地方政府抓好粮食生产的积极性。

Motivating farmers to cultivate grains and local administrations to attach importance to grain production is an essential foundation for ensuring national food security. This paper introduces the incentive policy for large grain-producing counties(IPLGC) implemented in 2005 into a government competition model and analyzes the impact of the policy on farmers’ income and county economic development. On this basis, it uses the annual panel data from 1,482 counties in China from 2005 to 2019 to treat the IPLGC as a quasi-natural experiment, and employs a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design(SRDD) to identify the policy effect of IPLGC and its potential mechanisms.The results show that: Overall, the IPLGC has a significant positive impact on farmers’ income;however,the economic development level of large grain-producing counties does not benefit from the policy. Heterogeneity analysis shows that, the IPLGC can significantly improve the economic development level of counties in poor and underdeveloped areas. Dynamic analysis shows that, the effect of the IPLGC on farmers’ income and county economic development fluctuates and is not stable across the years from 2005 to 2019. Mechanism analysis shows that, the IPLGC can promote farmers’ income and county economic development in underdeveloped areas by improving agricultural production conditions and increasing the supply of productive and educational public goods. The effectiveness of the IPLGC is tested by showing that the policy fails to improve the financial pressure of local governments in large grain-producing counties in general;at the same time, the GDP performance-only official promotion tournament is not conducive to increasing grain production in large grain-producing counties.According to the above conclusions, this paper suggests that the support for large grain-producing counties should be further enhanced, with particular emphasis on improving and perfecting the level of basic public services for large grain-producing counties. Meanwhile, the performance assessment on the use of incentive subsidies in large grain-producing counties should also be emphasized. Through a series of institutional designs, the counties should be encouraged to invest their incentive subsidies in critical fields such as agricultural production, education and healthcare, and transport infrastructure, so as to effectively improve the supply of public goods and promote the equalization of basic public services.This paper not only explores the effect of the IPLGC on farmers’ income and county economic development based on the government competition model for the first time, but also provides the first scientific evaluation of the policy effect of the IPLGC by employing the SRDD method. It not only provides solid empirical evidence for enhancing food production incentives, but also provides important policy insights for further food production.