财政分权、标尺竞争与教育支出

Fiscal Decentralization,Scale Competition and Education Expenditure

1994年开始实施的分税制改革拉开了我国财政分权的序幕,各级政府一直在探索该项制度的适应性发展。本文基于2005—2014年我国283个地级市政府数据,验证了财政分权、政府竞争对中国地方政府教育支出比重的影响。研究发现,在我国特有的政府集权与财政分权背景下,财政分权度与地方政府教育支出呈负向关系。同时由于以经济绩效为考核标准的官员晋升机制的存在,导致地方政府之间展开标尺竞争,这种竞争进一步缩减了教育支出,由此我们验证了标尺竞争在财政分权与教育支出的关系中起到了一定程度的中介效应,为财政分权对教育支出挤占效应的作用机制提供了合理解释。

The implementation of the 1994 tax reform was a prelude to China’s fiscal decentralization. Governments have been exploring the adaptive development of this system. Based on the data of 283 prefecture-level cities in China,this paper validates the influence of fiscal decentralization and government competition on local government education expenditure. The study has found that the fiscal decentralization is negatively related to the expenditure on education in the context of Chinese unique political centralization combined with fiscal decentralization. At the same time,due to the existence of the promotion mechanism of officials,the competition among local governments has been reduced,which has further reduced the expenditure of education. Thus,we prove that the scale competition plays a mediating effect to a certain extent in the relationship between fiscal decentralization and education expenditure,which provides a reasonable explanation for the crowding out effect of fiscal decentralization on education expenditure.