地方政府财政科技支出预算的收入效应与替代效应

Revenue Effect and Substitution Effect of Local Governments'Fiscal Science and Technology Budget

本文从收入效应与替代效应两个角度构建了地方政府财政收入影响财政科技支出预算的理论分析框架,将“撤县设区”作为影响财政收入的外生冲击,使用PSM-多时点DID和夏普利值分解法验证了两个效应的存在,并对其进行定量分解,明晰了财政收入影响财政科技支出预算的作用机制,扩展了财政科技支出预算的研究视角。研究发现,财政收入减少时,收入的变动将直接导致财政科技支出预算金额下降(收入效应),且经济建设支出和基本民生支出会对财政科技支出预算产生替代,造成财政科技支出预算占一般公共预算支出比重下降(替代效应);进一步地,替代效应在研究期间内随时间下降,且在经济水平较低、发展不平衡程度较高的城市中发挥主导作用,收入效应与之相反。本文的研究结果表明,保持财政收入稳定,将稳增长和保民生作为财政科技支出预算的落脚点是保障地方政府财政科技投入的重要基础。

Examining the factors that influence local governments'budgetary allocations towards science and technology is essential for high-quality technological advancement.This paper utilizes the concepts of the revenue effect and the substitution effect to construct a theoretical framework analyzing how the fiscal revenue of local governments influences their budgeting decisions for science and technology expenditure.The revenue effect is described as the decrease in fiscal technology spending directly caused by a decline in fiscal revenue,as fiscal science and technology budget is linked to the governmental revenue.The substitution effect occurs with a drop in fiscal revenue.Due to the local governments'autonomy in the budget for fiscal science and technology expenditure,a drop in fiscal revenue forces local governments to give precedence to more rigid expenditure areas over science and technology,consequently reducing its proportion in the general public budget.An important focus of this paper is the county-to-district reform,which involves reclassifying counties under the jurisdiction of municipalities or prefecture-level cities as districts.To overcome the endogeneity problem caused by the reciprocal causation between fiscal science and technology expenditure and fiscal revenue,this paper considers the county-to-district reform as an external shock affecting fiscal revenue and utilizes non-balanced panel data from 262 cities from 2010 to 2018.It applies the propensity score matching and multiple time points difference-in-differences(PSM-DID)method to confirm the revenue and substitution effects,considering that the county-to-district reform is a gradual reform.Besides,this paper uses the Shapley value decomposition method for a detailed quantitative analysis and identifies the dynamic changes of these two effects and their heterogeneity in cities with different characteristics.The research findings indicate that when fiscal revenue decreases,the change in fiscal revenue directly leads to a reduction in fiscal science and technology expenditure(revenue effect).Simultaneously,economic development expenditures and basic livelihood expenditures will substitute for fiscal science and technology expenditure,resulting in a decrease in the proportion of fiscal science and technology expenditure in general public budget expenditures(substitution effect).After conducting various robustness checks and placebo tests on PSM methods,policy characteristics of county-to-district reform and regression methods,the conclusions still hold.The study also reveals temporal dynamics and regional disparities in these effects.It shows that the substitution effect lessens over time and predominantly affects cities with lower economic development and higher developmental imbalance.However,the revenue effect exhibits the opposite trend,whose explanatory power increases over time and plays a leading role in cities with higher and more balanced economic development.This paper emphasizes the vital importance of maintaining a stable fiscal revenue for local governments.It highlights that focusing on stable growth and public welfare in budget allocations for science and technology is crucial for ensuring ongoing local government investment in this area.The contributions of this paper lie in two aspects.Firstly,it departs from the existing research paradigm that primarily focuses on specific institutional policies.Instead,this paper constructs a comprehensive logical framework within the government budget system,centered around the pathways of revenue effect and substitution effect,offering insights into the mechanisms by which these effects influence fiscal science and technology expenditure budgets through quantitative decomposition,and expanding the research perspective of fiscal science and technology expenditure budget.Secondly,after confirming the negative impact of the county-to-district reform on fiscal revenue in prefecture-level cities,this paper uses causal inference methods to verify the negative effect of this reform on science and technology expenditure budget,thus finally confirming the theoretical mechanism proposed in this paper.