允许先行先试还是一刀切禁止?——非正式经济、国家能力与民间创新

Allowing for Early and Pilot Implementations or Banning Them Outright?--Informal Economy,State Capacity and Local Innovation

本文讨论中央政府政策如何激励地方政府支持民间创新。地方政府既对创新的成本收益有信息优势,又可能借支持创新之名攫取私利;这造成逆向选择和道德风险双重问题同时存在。中央可选择两种政策:一是调整对非正式经济的事前终止概率,二是调整事后惩罚力度;两者分别对应地方决策权和国家能力的大小。本文阐释两者的互动:在国家能力较弱时,中央只能选择两个极端——或放任自流,或一刀切禁止所有非正式经济;而国家能力较强时,中央则可以允许先行先试,鼓励地方支持创新的同时限制其攫取私利。因此,宽松的地方决策环境,往往需要较强的国家能力作为支撑。

We study the impact of the central-local relationship on local innovation,focusing on the embedded adverse selection and moral hazard.Local governments have private information regarding both types and actions.The central government can terminate an informal economy as well as punish exploiting actions ex-post;reflecting,respectively,the power of local decision-making and the strength of state capacity.We emphasize the interplay between these two policies:when the state has weak capacity,it can only choose between two extremes-either letting it go or banning all informal economies altogether,while when the state has strong capacity,it can allow for early and pilot implementations,promoting innovation and prevent exploitation at the same time.Therefore,lenient local decision-making environments require strongstatecapacityas support.