节点文献
央地关系与区域经济格局：财政转移支付的视角
【作者】 范子英；
【导师】 张军；
【作者基本信息】 复旦大学 ， 西方经济学， 2010， 博士
【摘要】 对于一个像中国这样的大国而言,如何通过政府间关系的调整来达到更好的政府治理水平是摆在中央政府面前的难题,一方面要保证地方政府不会在经济上完全独立,避免威胁到社会和政治稳定,另一方面由于中国“地大物博”,各地区之间差异巨大,中央政府需要地方政府作为代理人来管理当地事务,因而又要给予地方一定的激励以提高地方政府的积极性。正是在这样一种权衡中,中央与地方之间一直处在“一放就乱,一收就死”的恶性循环。始于80年代初的第三次分权化改革以财政“大包干”为主体,形成了“地方强、中央弱”的局面,给予了地方政府极大的经济激励去发展当地经济,部分省份的边际留存率甚至达到100%。在这样一种高度分权的体系下,中国经济出现了前所未有的增长,同时也扩大了原有的地区差距和城乡差距,然而这种“乱”的局面还表现在中央与地方能力的对比上,两个比重——财政收入占GDP的比重和中央财政收入占总财政收入的比重——自1980年以来一直下降,到1993年降到历史最低水平,分别为11.2%和22%,央地之间财政能力的反差也直接影响到政府间的协调关系。于是在1994年,中央政府不得不以分税制改革的方式重新调整央地关系,在一定程度上加强了中央的财政集权,提升了中央政府在政府间关系上的地位。邓小平先生的“两个大局”强调了地区间平衡发展的最终目标,同时缩小地区差距也是各届中央政府努力想达到的目标,然而这在目前的分权框架之下是很难达到的,地区之间的地理条件和初始经济差距,再加上经济发展过程中的集聚效应,将使得沿海和内陆地区的差距越来越大。分税制改革降低了分权对于经济增长的作用,同时也使得中央政府有能力对政府间的关系进行新的调整,自1999年开始,中国实现了针对西部十二省份、东北部三省和中部六省的扶持计划,并通过财政上的巨额转移支付以援助这些地区的发展。这些战略的实施表明中央政府已经将沿海省份和内陆省份的政府区别看待,转移支付的增加使得内陆省份更加依赖于中央政府。本文正是在上述大背景下,通过研究央地之间关系的变迁,及其对地方经济格局、经济增长和政府行为的作用,与以往的文献相比,本文主要做了如下工作：首先,本文从理论和实证上检验了分权是存在底线的,利用中国分省的数据,发现经济发展的过程伴随着一些结构性问题的出现,特别是城乡分割、地区分割以及政府在公共品方面投入的不足等,本文采用非参数的基于松弛的非期望产出模型(Slacks-based Measure-SBM)计算了在分权框架下各地区各年的效率水平,该效率水平是对分权正负产出的综合衡量,实证结果也显示虽然分权促进了效率水平的提高,但是其作用随着时间呈现非常显著的下降,这是因为随着经济的发展,负面产出将会越来越严重,并且也直接威胁到未来的经济增长。其次,本文区分了转移支付对经济增长的短期效应和长期效应。正是在分权无法完美协调央地关系时,中央政府才采用转移支付的形式进行新一轮的调整。本文的实证结果显示,转移支付会显著改善转入地的短期经济增长效应,但会严重降低长期经济增长潜力,转移支付的累计效应为负,并且西部地区的负面作用更大。虽然转移支付有利于当地的基础设施建设,但不利于政府行政效率的改善、市场经济制度的建立和私人经济的发展,反而使得长期的经济增长绩效更差,转移支付因此也并不一定能带来区域之间经济的平衡发展。再次,本文考察了转移支付的间接效应和正外部性,转移支付的增加更加有利于国内市场的整合。理论模型表明地方保护主义是分权框架下政府的一个理性选择,而给予欠发达地区以一定的财政补助,恰好能够降低分权起作用的机制,使得地方政府转而选择区域合作与区域分工。实证结果也支持上述结论,利用“价格法”计算的市场分割指数与转移支付呈显著的负相关关系,并且在不同的转移支付项目中,专项转移支付的作用更大,而税收返还的作用并不明显,这实际上也表明中央政府在增加专项转移支付的同时,也确实在利用该项转移支付调整央地之间的关系,地方政府更加积极地配合中央的政策,放弃原来的地方割据行为,使得1995年之后的地方分割水平仅为之前的1/4。最后,本文还研究了转移支付的一个主要负面作用,转移支付会使得地方政府的短期规模和长期规模都急剧膨胀,从而降低地方政府的行政效率。大量的实证研究都表明中国的地方政府在经济中扮演了“援助之手”的角色,这甚至是中国和东欧国家转轨成效差异的主要因素。然而本文的研究却发现,过多的转移支付会加重地方政府对中央财力的依赖程度,一些地区每年从中央获得的转移支付的数量甚至远远超过其自身的财政收入,使得地方政府缺乏足够的经济激励来发展本地经济,并且那些获得更多转移支付的省份的政府规模也膨胀的更快,由本地财政收入增加带来的政府人员规模的扩张效应远远小于转移支付的效应,后者是前者的1000多倍,并且财力性转移支付和专项转移支付都会使得地方政府规模出现膨胀。政府人员规模的扩张表明那些转移支付的接受地又将面临下一个“吃饭财政”的困境,并会由此增加对中央财政转移支付的需求,最终陷入一个恶性循环。在方法论上,本文不仅仅采用了理论研究与实证研究相结合的方法,还结合中国实际和本文的研究内容采用了一些最新的方法,主要包括：1)本文采用了基于非参数估计的DEA方法,该方法对于多投入多产出的估计更加客观,弥补了普通计量经济学方法的不足,并且本文应用了前沿的SBM方法,该方法相对于普通的DEA方法的优点是可以将松弛(Slacks)纳入效率的计算中,更加适用于有负面产出的生产过程；2)对于长期效应的估计,本文不仅仅采用了传统的通过添加滞后项的方法,还采用了Mitchell和Sperker在1986年提出的框架,该方法有两个优点：一是允许线性和非线性的递减滞后效应,并且采用了类似于Almon(1965)的无限期滞后,避免了人为的识别问题,二是在估计上可以简化为普通的OLS；3)本文应用了公共财政学和区域经济学的知识,并通过分工理论建立区域经济发展模型,数理模型的结果表明地区之间的分工和合作是可以通过财政的手段来协调,并进而增进全国层面的规模经济。本文的研究不仅对财政体制的改革有重要借鉴意义,还为区域平衡发展模式和中国未来进一步的改革方向提供了政策建议,并对现阶段的地区性发展战略提供了一个综合的评价体系。本文的结论表明,目前的财政转移支付体制存在诸多弊端,未来需要建立更加公正、公平和公开的转移支付制度,而通过中央政府转移财力的方法来促进区域的平衡发展是不可行的,并会因此而带来新的矛盾。未来要实行区域的平衡发展,应该采取多方位的配套改革,首先要改革目前的政治考核标准,明确财政的作用,中央的转移支付应立足于公共品的提供,其次要完善市场经济制度的建设,加强对私有产权的保护和鼓励私人投资,最后要深化要素市场的改革,促使要素在不同地区之间自由流动,以达到人均意义上的平衡发展。因而本文不仅仅是几大学科之间的交叉研究,其结论还对中国下一轮的改革和未来和谐社会的建设有着重要的应用价值。
【Abstract】 Concerning a country as big as China, how to adjust the intergovernmental relationship to achieve better governance efficiency is a huge challenge faced by the central government. The central government must ensure that local governments’ economies will not be totally independent on the one hand, to avoid threats of social and political stability, on the other hand as China’s "big country",the huge differences between regions, the central government needs local governments as an agents to manage local affairs, which also needs to approve local governments some economic incentive to increase development enthusiasm. It is in such a trade-off, the central and local governments have been in a bad circle of "disorder when decentralization, slowing down when centralization".The third fiscal decentralization reform began in the early 80’s, characterized by the "all-round fiscal contract",forming a phenomenon of "strong local governments and weak central government",the contract gives local governments a great economic incentive to develop the local economy, the marginal retention rate even up to 100% in some provinces. In such a highly decentralized system, the Chinese economy witnessed an unprecedented growth, while also expanded the original regional disparity and urban-rural inequality, the disorder also affected the comparative capacity of central government and local governments. The two ratios-the share of total governmental revenue in GDP, and the central share of fiscal revenue-has been declining since 1980s to its lowest level of 11.2% and 22% in 1993, these changes also has a direct impact on the coordination of intergovernmental relations between central and provincial. So in 1994, the central government has to readjust the central-local relationship through the tax sharing reform, to strengthen the central fiscal centralization and raise the central governmental status of intergovernmental relations.Deng Xiaoping’s "Two Major Configurations" emphasizes the ultimate goal of balanced development between regions, narrowing the regional gap is also that the central government trying to achieve, but is difficult to achieve under the current framework of decentralization, since the initial geographical conditions and economic endowment disparities, combined with the agglomeration effects during the process of economic development, the combined effect will make the difference between coastal and inland areas to be larger and larger. The tax sharing system reform reduces the role of decentralization for economic growth, while the central government regains the ability to make new adjustment of the relationship between the governments. Since 1999, China made financial support program for twelve western, three northeast provinces and six central provinces, and aid the development of these areas through the huge fiscal transfers.The implementation of these strategies means that the central government considers the inland provinces different of the coastal provinces, the increase of fiscal transfer payments made inland provinces be more dependent on central government. This paper studies the changes of relationship between the central and local, and its impact on the local economic patterns, economic growth and local governmental behaviors, under the context mentioned above. Comparing the previous literature, this paper has done the following work:First, this paper theoretical and empirically tests the existence of the bottom line of decentralization.Using the Chinese provincial data, this paper find that the process of economic development accompanied by some structural problems, particularly urban-rural division, regional segmentation and lack of investment in public goods from the government. Based on the non-parameter model of non-expected output (Slacks-based Measure-SBM), this paper calculates the efficiency of each province within the framework of fiscal decentralization, the efficiency is a comprehensive measure of the positive and negative outputs, the empirical results show that the fiscal decentralization improve the efficiency, but its effect showed significant decline over time, this is because the negative outputs will be increasingly serious as the economy develops, and finally threat the future economic growth.Second, the paper distinguishes the long-term effects of short-term effect of transfers on economic growth. Since the central government can not coordinate the governmental relationship perfectly under the decentralization, it has to adopt the form of transfer payment with a new round of adjustment. The empirical results show that the transfer payments will dramatically improve short-term economic growth, but would seriously reduce long-term potential economic growth, while the cumulative effect of transfer payments is negative, and the effects in western region is much larger. Although transfer payments is in favor of local infrastructure, but is not useful for the improvement of administrative efficiency, the establishment of market economic system and private economies development, then makes long-term economic growth performance is even worse, transfers therefore does not necessarily bring the balanced economic development between regions. Third, the fourth chapter in this paper examines the indirect effects and positive externalities of transfer payments, the increase of which is more conducive to the integration of the domestic market. Theoretical model shows that market protectionism is a rational choice of government under the framework of fiscal decentralization, while giving some financial assistance to less developed areas would reduce the role of fiscal decentralization, and then makes local governments turn to select the regional cooperation and regional division. The empirical results also support the conclusion above, using the "Price Based Approach" to calculate market segmentation index, which is significant negative correlative with transfer payments, and the special transfer is most important in various transfer payments, while the tax rebate is not significant. This fact shows that the central government not only increased special transfer payments, but also used such kind of transfer to adjust the relationship between central and local government to get more supportive action with the central government’s policies from local governments, the local governments would give up their market protactinium and made segmentation index is only 1/4 after 1995 then before.Finally, this paper also study one of major negative effects of transfer payments, the transfer payments will make the short-term and long-term governmental sizes expand rapidly, thereby reducing the local government’s administrative efficiency. A large number of empirical literatures show that China’s local governments play the role of "helping hand" during the economic transition, which might be the main factor of economic achievement between Chinese and Eastern European countries. This paper finds that too much fiscal transfer will increase the dependence of local governments on central government financial resources, the amount of annual transfer payments in some provinces granted from the central is even much more than its own revenue, so local governments lack sufficient economic incentive to develop their economies, and the size of government has expanded much faster when they get more transfer payments, the expanding effect of local government staff size from the increase in revenue is much smaller than the effect of transfer payments, the later is over 1000 times larger than the former. The expansion of the local government size means that the acceptances of transfer payments to those who will in turn face the next "mouth-feeding finance" dilemma, and will thus increase the demand for central government transfer payments and eventually fall into a worse circle.In the methodology, this paper not only uses combined approach of theoretical research and empirical research, but also adopts some new methods considering the China’s reality and this study, which including:1) this paper uses the DEA methods based on nonparametric estimation, this method is more objective and accurate for multi-input multi-output process, to make up for the general shortcoming of econometric methods. This paper uses the front SBM model which has the advantage of including the Slacks in the calculation of efficiency relative to the normal method DEA, the SBM is more suitable for the production of negative outputs; 2) This paper not only estimates the long-term effects by adding lagged terms, but also uses the framework proposed by Mitchell and Sperker in 1986, the later method has two advantages:first, it allows linear and nonlinear declining lagged effects, and uses indefinite lags similar to the Almon(1965) to avoid the artificial identification problem, second, it can be estimated by ordinary OLS;3) This paper mixes the knowledge of public finance and regional economics, builds a regional economic development models through the theory of division, the mathematical model shows that the division and cooperation between different regions can be achieved through fiscal transfer, and thus enhance the economies of scale on national level.This study not only has an important reference to the reform of fiscal system, but also gives policy recommendations for regional balanced development strategies and the direction of further reform, and also provides a comprehensive evaluation system for current regional development strategy. The conclusions show that the current fiscal transfer system has many disadvantages, the further reform should aim to build a more just, equal and open system of transfer payments, and it is not feasible to promote balance development by transferring financial resources by the central government and will therefore bring new contradictions. The implementation of balanced development in the future should rely on multi-directional reforms, we must first reform the current political promotion standards, regulate the role of the central fiscal transfer within the provision of public goods, then constructing the perfect market economic system to strengthen the protection of private property rights and encourage private investment, finally reforming the factor market to encourage free movement between different areas in order to achieve the balanced development of per capita sense. So this paper is not only a cross study of several fields, also the conclusions have important values on the next round of reform in China and the construction of a harmonious society in the future.