资金转移配置、央地目标偏离与政策治理的靶向性:以环境治理为例

Allocation of Funds Transfer,Deviation of Objectives between Central and Local Governments,and Targeting of Policy Governance:Taking Environmental Governance as an Example

央地关系的处理是挖掘提升政府治理能力的新引擎,也是实现国家治理能力现代化建设函须关注的问题。本文以环境治理政策为例,利用有限理性的行为公共经济学理论,从资金转移配置视角剖析央地目标决策与政策治理靶向性之间的内在关系。以“低碳城市”试点的推行为切入点,实证评估试点直达与试点中转对城市空气质量的异质效应,发现“直达试点”对城市空气质量有显著的改善作用,而“中转试点”对城市空气质量改善没有显著作用,政策直达具有更强的靶向性。通过调节效应检验发现,在晋升机制和发展压力作用下,“中转试点”的地区在资金使用过程中更易诱发转移配置行为,加剧地方执行目标与中央制定目标的偏离程度,导致其政策靶向效应较弱,政策治理效果不明显。本文揭示了央地决策目标偏离的根本原因,为研究政策治理的靶向性与财政资金直达机制提供一定的理论参考,为实现央地决策目标一致、全面提升国家与政府治理能力指明了改革方向。

Modernizing the state system and capacity for governance is a strong guarantee for achieving the Two Centenary Goals and national rejuvenation,and as the core subject of state governance,is directly related to the government's governance ability.In-depth analysis of the relationship between central and local governments and the internal mechanism of inter-governmental behavior and decision-making under the current system will help identify a new engine for improving and then modernizing the state capacity for governance.This paper takes environmental governance policy as an example,and uses the behavioral public economics theory to study the problem of the deviation of central and local policy goals and the targeting of policy effects.First of all,we constructed a mathematical model of the targeting of central and local decisionmaking objectives and policy governance to explain at the theoretical level the“fund transfer allocation”behavior that local governments are prone to in the process of resource investment under the current promotion mechanism,which will induce the deviation of central and local decision-making objectives,which is the fundamental reason for the low efficiency of policy governance and the difficulty in realizing the“targeted effect.”Secondly,using the panel data of 256 prefecture-level cities across the country,we studied the 2020“low-carbon city”pilot project,and used the difference-in-differences method to empirically evaluate the policy heterogeneity effects on the urban air quality of policy pilot cities and the policy transfer cities.Through a series of robustness tests,we found that the air quality of policy pilot cities significantly improved,while the policy transfer cities showed no obvious improvement,thus demonstrating that the“targeted effect”generated by the implementation of the pilot policy is better than that of the policy transfer.Then,we used the difference in economic growth pressure to test the mechanism of adjustment effect.In the heterogeneous effect assessment of the two types of pilot cities,we found that as the growth pressure increased,the inhibition effect of low-carbon pilot policy on the concentration of PM2.5 gradually decreased,and the higher the growth pressure,the higher thePM2.5level.The marginal contributions of this paper are mainly as follows.(1)It incorporates the behavioral public economics theory of limited rationality into the research framework of the targeting of central and local governments'behavioral decision-making and policy governance,and explores the policy implementation level to seek the path of achieving the consistency of central and local governments'decision-making goals at the theoretical level.(2)For the first time,the quasi-natural experiment method was used to demonstrate at macro and micro levels that the“transfer allocation”in the use of funds is the root cause of the deviation of objectives between the central and local governments,and the stronger the motivation,the greater the degree of goal deviation and the weaker the policy targeting effect.(3)This paper pioneers in using empirical evidence to test the effectiveness of policy implementation forms and their“targeted effects”at the level of public governance.It provides certain reference value for the current discussion on the direct funding mechanism from the perspective of technology selection and theoretical research.(4)Through comparative evaluation,we found that in the central and local governments'decision-making process,the direct policy has lower goal deviation and better policy targeting effect than the policy transfer,which indicates the reform direction for aligning central and local policy goals and comprehensively improving the state and local governments'capacity for governance.