“乡财县管”改革、基层政府治理与经济发展

County-Managing-Town Fiscal Reform,Local Government Governance and Economic Development

县乡两级政府处于我国政府层级的最末端,是大量公共事务的最终承担者,科学合理的县乡财政管理体制,是提升基层治理能力的重要制度保障。2004年以来,我国一些省份相继推行了乡财县管改革,由县级政府直接管理并监督乡镇财政,乡镇财政管理权被大幅度上收到县。本文利用2000-2019年的县域面板数据和双重差分模型,评估了乡财县管改革对经济发展的影响。结果显示,乡财县管促进了县域经济发展。机制分析显示,乡财县管减少了行政管理支出比重,抑制了财政供养人员规模膨胀,降低了税费负担。这些结果表明,加强上级政府对基层政府的财政管理与监督,有助于改善治理水平、促进经济发展。本文也发现,在地形较为复杂的人口大县及经济较发达地区的县,由于改革一定程度上提高了县级政府获取信息的难度,不利于发挥乡镇政府的积极性,乡财县管对经济发展的提升效果相对较弱,这说明,乡财县管不宜“一刀切”地实行。

County and township governments are at the bottom of China's government hierarchy.They are also the ultimate undertakers of a large number of public affairs.After China's reform and opening up,county and township governments have experienced two major reforms.In 1983,with the disintegration of the People's Commune system,the township government and financial systems were re-established.However,after the Tax Sharing Reform in 1994 and the Rural Tax Reform after 2000,the contradiction between revenue and expenditure in vllages and towns became more serious.Problems such as the lack of constraints on financial expenditure,the expansion of the financial-support population,the difficulty in guaranteeing normal public service expenditure,and even illegal charges and large-scale debt raising were exposed.To solve these problems,since 2003,some provinces have begun to explore the county-managing-town fiscal reform.In 2006,the central government began to explicitly encourage all provinces to promote this reform.The county-managing-town fiscal reform means that township financial revenue and expenditure are directly managed and supervised by county-level financial departments.Although the county and township financial system still remain,townships'financial management power has been greatly shifted to the county level(Yang and Liu,2012).Therefore,the county-managing-town fiscal reform is a reform of fiscal centralization.At the same time,with township finances becoming inappreciable,county-level governments began to directly bear a large amount of public service expenditure.In this sense,the reform is also a flat reform of the financial hierarchy(Jia,2007).This paper answers the following question:Has the county-managing-town fiscal reform improved the governance and public service provision capacity of grassroots governments and ultimately promoted economic development?Based on county-level data from 2000 to 2014,this paper uses the difference-in-differences model to evaluate the impact of the reform on economic development.The results show that the reform has promoted economic development,and that county per capita CDP has increased by 4.8%on average.The mechanism analysis shows that the county-managing-town fiscal reform reduces the proportion of administrative expenditure,inhibits the expansion of the scale of the financial-support population,and reduces the tax burden.These results show that strengthening the financial management and supervision of the higher levels of the hierarchy will help to improve grassroots governance and promote economic development.This paper also finds that the promotion efect of reform is weak in counties with large populations and more developed economies.The reason for this is that it has become dfficult for county governments to obtain information after the reform,or that it does not inspire enthusiasm among township governments,which indicates that the reform should not be implemented across the board.The contributions of this paper are as follows.First,this paper quantitatively evaluates the impact of the county-managing-town fiscal reform on economic development and local government behavior for the first time.Second,this paper tentatively extends research on inter-governmental financial relationships to the county and township levels.Finally,this paper analyzes the effect of reforms that flatten the financial hierarchy from the perspective of the county-managing-town fiscal reform.